See her run
by Pentuppen
Summary: When Solas reveals his true nature, he believes it will be the last time he will see Lavellan. Talitha is returning to her clan, leaving the Inquisition behind. But there are loose threads that have not forgotten the Inquisitor so easily, and the love of the dread wolf is not easily forgotten. Will solas stick to his convictions or will the dread wolf claim what is his?
1. Chapter 1

**So yes, I've done it again. I've gone and gotten inspired to write more Solas and Lavellan fic. For those of you who read 'What you owe', yes this is the same solas and Lavellan pairing, but not the same story. This does not mean that i won't be tempted to make you all reach for the box of tissues again, this story will be quite full of angst, and of course, some eventual smut. I have no idea how long this will be, I only have a few chapters outlined in advance, so i am flying by the seat of my pants here, but i promise to do my best to once again do justice to this most angsty of pairings.**

 **This fic is of course, wholly self indulgent and i make no apologies for it, hard as it is to write from Solas' perspective, the smooth bald bastard makes me work for a good story. I will blur the lines of Cannon mechanics as little as humanly possible for a story that takes place after trespasser, but in some places i have quite clearly thrown out the rulebook and just made shit up!**

 **To be honest if just one person enjoys this story i have done what i have set out to do which is to just share some of the awesome inspiration provided to us by Bioware, a company i have always had a long term love affair with.**

 **But enough of the babble, please enjoy the fruits of my labour!**

 **Chapter One: What you deserve**

I know you, we've been here before. No surprises. A settled score.  
I know the darkness, from inside. Reckless rage, and poisoned pride  
~~I know you- by White Buffalo~~

* * *

When he had once sat within the painted rotunda of Skyhold and idly imagined her stepping amongst the ancient shelves of the shattered library, it had not been like this. He'd had an almost perfect impression of her wonderment held in his mind, her expressive face caught in the moment when she saw the tightly bound pages containing words that had lived through countless ages, enough words to perhaps satisfy even her voracious appetite for answers to all the questions of her world. He had envisioned her laughter, both incredulous and perhaps a little sad when she learned the truth of it all in those pages and how it measured against the lies she had been told as a Dalish. She would have spent hours amongst those books, and hours more wanting to hear the same words from his mouth, her questions delighted and probing. Most of all he'd sought to conjure that smile, a single expression that that would speak so many things, gratitude, the cynical edge of her mirth and cautious love. He had seen all these things so clearly, and he had seen himself as her guide, walking beside her and sharing her wonder, which of course only underlined the childish fallacy of such thoughts.

He had not imagined the hot stench of blood and gaatlok cordite that permeated the air and fell in the wake of her determined tread, along with anything that stood in her way, nor the savage path she had been forced to carve her way through in order to get this far. She had been robbed of the time to appreciate the beauty of such a sad place in anything but passing, when she would have gladly spent a lifetime amongst the dusty tomes and ancient artifacts if given half the chance to do so. More importantly, despite the idle fancies of his wandering thoughts both then and now, she was never meant to be here at all. Back then the idea of her ever reaching this place, of reaching the truth about him, had been unthinkable, it had been a private and beautiful lie in his head that would never come to pass

The woman that walked the corners of fantasy in his mind could be tailored to understand all that he was and to withstand all that he must do. But the woman that fought her way to him unknowing, had been told far too many lies for her to even begin to understand. The lies had been born when he could have had no inkling of what she would mean to him and he to her, those lies had gathered momentum until there was nothing left to do but to weave them further into that unseen tapestry he wore about him like a shield as she began to become unbearably real to him and more than a little dangerous to his resolve.

He had torn himself from her side and it had not been painless, he had hardened his heart just as he had once told her to do, only to find that she slipped back in when he least expected it, her ghost touching upon old wants that should have been buried along with the lies. To see her hung within the frame of the eluvian now is all too telling, he has missed her beyond what he could imagine and it hit him all at once, staggering the coldness that has surrounded him in the last two years, that utilitarian cold designed to freeze all but what needed to be done from a heart that held far too much sorrow. Her face was like a thrown lance to that weary heart, it bit deep and it pained him greatly to watch her steady approach because he knew that when she found him, he would once more have to force himself to turn away, and in doing so, hurt her again.

It would be one more pain upon countless others for her to endure, one more bruise that would not fade, another chain to add to the many he had wrapped around her heart. He had meant to give her an eventual peace when he'd left Skyhold. It had hurt her just as it had hurt him to leave her at such a time, but the wound would have scarred over eventually. But now he was forced to use her as a tool, a despicable act towards one he professed to love, not softened by the fact that it might well save her life, it would be a wound reopened for both of them.

She should never have been here, but she is, and she is coming to him with her heart unprepared.

He would call his deceit necessary, even noble, if he wanted to lie to himself as well as her. It was true enough that she would die without his help now, but this was almost secondary to the fact that he needed what she possessed, he had tried and failed to further his plans without it, the anchor had to be returned. If only it could have been done without causing her more than just physical pain, if only he could have been more than just another scar waiting to happen to her soul.

And was there not a guilty sin like pleasure in watching her as she began her journey through this broken place? He had observed almost greedily, her reaction upon unlocking the first strands of truth, finding undeniable satisfaction in her incredulous exhilaration when she understood the meanings hidden in the mosaic's. She has never been more beautiful than when something breathed life into her desire for knowledge, she'd carried unanswered questions for so long that they had chased her from her home with the Dalish and into the treacherous arms of the Conclave. She had all but hounded him for tales of his time in the fade, searching for the smallest crumb of truth amongst the history he had seen, envying him with open awe she had never been self conscious enough to hide.

It was this that drew him to her more than anything else, disarming and wild as she was, she was a child of learning who'd had the misfortune to be born into a world where tradition frowned upon questions that challenged it. With the mysteries of Fen'Harel finally unfurling before her, it should have been a treasured moment, instead her bright enthisiasm for the knowledge only made what he was about to do even worse.

With the threat of the approaching Qunari at his back, he still hadn't been able to tear his eyes away from her as she discovered these long withheld answers, and that was the very root of the danger she has always posed to him. Being near had her made everything else fade, allowed him to call into question what had at first been obvious while he walked among an entire world that seemed tranquil. Witnessing her very personality began to make the ghosts that surrounded him in this world, swim into better focus, while it had made her shine like a beacon until even he couldn't deny its power to challenge his perspective. When he'd touched her, he had felt the almost painful and creaking lurch of atrophied emotions being forced to work once again, it had left him feeling young and almost foolish at first, and as those emotions and their accompanying sensations threw off the dust of ages and gathered momentum, he had felt continuously aflame, both in body and mind.

He see's her now, captured and fascinated by the rows of books, an anguished tilt of her eyes expressing disappointment that she would not be able to dwell here, and he knew the thought of passing by all that waiting history and truth would pain her almost as much as the anchor. It is not the first time that duty has pulled her away from the freedom of discovery and it will not be the last. More truths awaited her path and some of them were bitter or simply downright frightening. He knew her opinions of Fen'harel were both whimsical and questioning. From the way she left small tributes of precious stones and metals at the wolf statues in deference to a shape that had given her comfort as a frightened child, to the questions that had caused her own clan to eye her with growing unease, her view on his re-written past had clashed with all around her. But how would her own questions about his origin stand up against the fear driven stories of the Dalish when she learned the truth?

When she faced the true wolf, would her cynical and pragmatic mind prevail amongst a lifetime of well constructed lies fabricated into truth and then eventually, legend? Or would that instinctual fear of him learned through generations, prevail?

* * *

 _The old shrine beneath the dead stone hand is almost completely darkened save for the dim promise of flickering magical light that floated about the ancient mechanism at its centre, and the bright gleam in her eyes when she see's it. The stylised bronze spheres are unmistakably of his people and he can see she knows it too, the realisation casting a hungry grin to her lips, one that makes the Tevinter groan and Cassandra sigh, both of them knowing she will not be drawn from here until she has been given time to explore this strange contraption. Both already resigned to her whim, for who could refuse the woman who sacrifices much for so little reward? He is silent in her contemplation of the ruins, preferring to watch her mind working behind eyes that flit around the shadows, before her daring yet respectful tread toured the room, stopping at intervals to inspect parts of the mechanism in an effort to guess how it worked._

 _He remains leaning against a crumbling pillar, watching her progress, all but seeing the clockwork of her mind turning as she moved, inspiration finally sparked when she touches upon a lever and the tall stone hunter turns with a rumbling grind of old gears, jerking to face an unobstructed sphere before launching an arrow, the resulting ringing gong exciting the faintly glowing particles of magic to grow brighter and coalesce within the sphere itself. Cassandra and Dorian are looking about warily, perhaps concerned that the sound might herald the arrival of guardians or more monstrous pests, but Talitha's face is aglow with fierce joy and he quietly drinks it in as one might savour the finest of wines. She seems to sense his observance and turns that joy his way, her blade like grin almost seething with excitement he can't ignore, and he cannot help but allow the softest of smiles in return._

 _It doesn't take her long to work out that the braziers are of some significance, and she is only temporarily stymied by the one trapped behind a locked gate until she fully takes in his casual stance and narrows her eyes suspiciously while approaching. The familiar scent of pine and lyrium find him again as she draws close enough to place both hands on his upper arms, and he allows himself to be moved one step to his left, the shifting of his frame revealing a second lever. Her eyes are still narrowed and her lips are pressed tightly together in response to his mild trickery, but he can tell that she's biting the insides of her mouth to keep from laughing, the bright mirth in her eyes increasing, for it isn't often that he is playful, even subtly so, and she takes each rare instance as a gift._

 _"Ass"_

 _He responds with an all too solemn bow as she flips the lever, the locked gate lifting while another closed beyond it's boundaries._

 _"And how long would you have waited had i not noticed you were looking decidedly smug about something?"_

 _He stares straight ahead, daring to look deadpan and knowing he is more than well equipped to pull it off. "For as long as it took no doubt, how else will you learn if you are not challenged?"_

 _She makes a soft sound, somewhere between a laugh and a snort and gently admonishes him with an elbow to the ribs. "I was right the first time, you're an ass"_

 _He concedes with a faint shrug and the smallest of twitches at the corner of his mouth and she shakes her head , huffing an escaped strand of white blonde hair from her eyes before she points at one of the unlit braziers like a mother sending her child to his bed, her mouth forced into sternness until he bowed again and strode to his place. Cassandra and Dorian are likewise directed to the other braziers while she returned to the first lever , and when all three were lit she once again turned the stone hunter to fire into another sphere, the lights growing brighter in their bronze cages, though the improved view of decrepit walls leaves much to be desired, he could almost see what this place might have once been like._

 _The third sphere is easier to light, requiring only Cassandra's heavily armoured bulk upon a pressure plate, the obstructing pillar descending for the next arrow to hit its resonating mark. The last unlit sphere takes a little longer to work out, and this time he is hiding no integral levers, but eventually Dorian is hustled beyond the newly opened gate, looking openly bemused until she hit the lever again, the gate closing with a rather defined clang. The Tevinter grips the bars and half glares between them as she approaches._

 _"If it turns out that i die because you're unlocking some ancient elven lavatory you're going to feel decidedly silly and i shall feel decidedly justified to haunt you for the rest of your days my dear"_

 _She pulls herself up on the bars of the gate, bumping her nose briefly against Dorian's and Solas knows that she could talk a mountain into moving aside if given long enough, the Tevinter's complaints are simply an expected facet of their friendship, and he wonders what her clan would think of such a pairing._

 _"Dorian...sweetheart, if you die it will be while surrounded by adoring admirers, and i would tell them all of the time you threw yourself into captivity in order to further the pursuit of a great and ancient treasure, I'll even throw in a dragon"_

 _"I don't get out of bed for anything less than two dragons i'll have you know"_

 _Her quiet and low laughter resonates as deeply in his chest as the spheres chime had against these low stone walls, reminding him again that despite a will that could boast thousands of years of training, the question of whether or not he is falling for her, has already been answered. Their relationship is hardly more than a continuous mental sparring, and had she not been his friend first, perhaps they might not have even had that, not when he knew the cost that awaited him and did what he could to keep this slow moving infatuation at arms length. But this simple sound, not even aimed at him, finds it's way to his ears and he can imagine that low laughter in the dim light of a bedroom where the secrets she spoke would be warm and taste of lyrium touched skin._

 _"The sooner you turn that wheel over there, the sooner we can return to camp and i can tell you about the scandalous poetry i was sent by a former Antivan Crow, it's very...descriptive, Cassandra blushed harder than when she read the last chapter of swords and shields"_

 _"I did not!"_

 _The heated declaration echoes around the chamber, the Seeker's denial only confirming the truth and the Tevinter laughs and claps his hands._

 _"Oh, now that settles it, anything scandalous enough to make the Seeker deny so hotly has to be delicious enough to warrant me doing the work of an oxman, hold on a moment"_

 _The wheel mechanism turns out to be stiff and unyielding without some applied effort and inventive Tevene swearing, but eventually the pillar begins to lower and she dashes to the lever, timing it's pull precisely for the hunter to swing one last time, his arrow finding its mark and the chamber growing brighter. She takes several slow steps back, her face bathed in the glow of magic that drifted like lazy butterflies, over to the locked door that held her curiosity simply for the fact that it was locked._

 _The door opened and she peered inside. A moment later she was laughing._

 _"Of course it would be you old wolf, even down here you follow me!"_

 _Dorian rests his forearms through the bars, still panting while trying to see what she was looking at, "Don't tell me we went through all that for another Fen'harel statue, is this one at least made of gold or adorned with gems?"_

 _She crosses the room and flips the lever to let him out, the tevinter looking relieved to not be looking through a perspective of bars once more, he gives the statue beyond the door a sour look, likely noting the lack of anything shiney._

 _"No, he's made of stone and adorned with lichen, but we don't know what he might be guarding, so I suppose we should be ready."_

 _"Marvellous, a mouldy statue and the promise of more elven trickery, you never take me anywhere nice these days"_

 _Cassandra clapped a heavy gauntleted hand on the Tevinter's shoulder , "Cheer up Dorian, if you die down there you'll no longer owe Varric 50 sovereigns"_

 _"A veritable comfort as always Seeker"_

* * *

 _Twenty minutes later the last of the undead fell beneath the stunning blow of Cassandra's shield, and they were free to pick through the dusty bones and old containers that had once been beautiful in their composition, but now only held the rough patina of so many years gone by. It saddened him to see the place so infested, like many of the things his people had built, it had once been glorious to behold, now it was simply hostage to the ravages of time and things forgotten. A relic, like himself._

 _As the others search through what has been left behind, he notes that she had disappeared again, a habit he was not fond of and one that nobody could curb no matter the lecture. She had not gone far, only to the first chamber where she stands before the wolf statue, digging about in the leather bag slung at her hip and muttering to herself, or more accurately, at the statue._

 _"Oh come on, i know i had some pyrite in here somewhere, my apologies old wolf, i didn't exactly expect to find you down here"_

 _She dares to speak to the effigy that was his as if it is an old friend, and perhaps it is, for she has followed this ritual from childhood, ignoring the way it had made her a pariah amongst her own people, daring to challenge the stories with her questioning nature and never seeming afraid. If she knew how closely the Dread Wolf truly followed her, would she still speak with that same fondness he wonders._

 _Stepping behind her he stalls her fruitless search of the bag with cool fingers at her wrist, turning her hand palm up and ghosting his own across it, leaving a small shard of glittering dawnstone behind in the cupped flesh. His fingers idle against the back of hers for a moment, the impulse born from nothing but the scent of her hair and that small smile of gratitude that thanks him for more than a piece of dawnstone. These displays of affection are just as rare as anything else that lives behind the mask he must wear, and her gratitude confuses him because he gives so little for all that she has offered him._

 _As always in these rare moments when they are close like this, there is an air of suspended time, as if the very world held it's breath while they looked at each other, waiting for one of them to cross that gulf between them despite how close they were. In reality her dark blue eyes held his only for a few seconds, his thumb grazing the pulse hidden beneath that delicate wrist, feeling it stutter from even this understated affection. He hated this, hated that every move around her had to be negotiated with care, his affections measured out with enough accuracy to prevent either of them to go too far._

 _Most of all he hated that she knew this and accepted it anyway, did she truly value herself so little that she imagined she received only what she deserved, did she honestly believe she didn't deserve more? If only she had the slightest idea how much he held back. Even now he strikes down a thousand impulses all straining at their leash in her presence, settling for guiding her cupped hand to the dust coated pedestal between the stone wolf's paws, his mouth half an inch from her ear when he spoke in a quiet murmur._

 _"Tell me, what would you do if the old wolf ever answered you back"_

 _He detects the minor signs of her suppressed shudder, she fears even to react to his occasional whims, letting him toy with her until she would eventually snap and press her advantage, and he would once more find himself at a crossroads that always ended in his retreat from her and the powerful need she evoked in him. He should know better. He does know better, such a question is pure self indulgence and he knows it, if she ever found out who he was then she would hate him for his games._

 _"Before or after i wet myself because a statute is talking to me?" She tries for amused but he can hear the hint of breathlessness in her voice, it satisfies him like the smallest bite into a fruit he did not dare devour._

 _"Colourful, but not an answer" His lips now move against the outer line of her ear when he speaks, a foolish test of his resolve but paid for in full when she cannot suppress the next shudder and her stuttering breath fills his head._

 _"I would ask him the first questions that came to me when I became old enough to grow suspicious of the old tales. Why was a creature so feared when it was given a face that is so wise, and who forced the Dread Wolf's hand, for nothing in this world condemns itself to being alone without reason"_

 _His hand tightens about her wrist briefly in reflex to her answer, her honesty an all too stark reminder of why he felt it so difficult to draw away from her for long. There was no other like her, she followed not her heart but the truth, and she did so with such a fierce determination that one might be forgiven for thinking her blasphemous. Yet she still believed the name Fen'Harel as belonging to a god, she simply refused to bow to it, offering instead the same thing she offered to all she met, herself and nothing more. It is a heady combination for a centuries old rebel, and she has no idea what measurements he must put in place to ignore the desire to show her exactly what she did to him with words like this._

 _"You truly are terrible at being Dalish" the quiet promise of a kiss hovers at the space just below her ear, it would be so easy…_

 _"You know i rather think you haven't yet gotten the point of treasure hunting Talitha dear, you're supposed to take the shiny baubles, not leave them behind, it's all a bit backwards if you ask me"_

 _Dorian's smooth and cultured drawl shatters the unplanned tension between them and he finds himself drawing away from her a little too quickly, a frown deepening on his lips and between his eyes as he watched them approach, Cassandra's mouth drawn into its usual stoic line, though her eyes regard them both with the avid look he had seen when he'd caught her in the act of reading Varric's ridiculous romance serial. He does not approve of that look, it told him that he was not as subtle as he thought._

 _Talitha reaches up on tiptoe to scratch behind one stone ear, tactfully ignoring the haste of his retreat, and once again he finds himself acknowledging that she deserves more._

 _"Dorian, I thought you had more appreciation for the fine art of rebellion."_

 _"Right now I'd have a deeper appreciation of a warm fire and some good wine, are we done here?"_

 _She rolls her eyes but nods and makes an 'after you' gesture, the Seeker filing in behind, Solas giving her one last look as she turns back to the stone wolf and speaks under her breath._

 _"A little more luck if you don't mind old wolf"_

* * *

They were coming for him now, no longer attempting to hide their approach, confident in their strength, and not a one of them understanding what it was they truly faced. In the two years since he had turned away from Skyhold and from her, he had placed a heavier mask between himself and the world, one comprised from the iron of his will. To wear such a mask, he'd had to set aside a piece of his soul, the part that would baulk at the kind of things he would have to do to free his people. This did not mean that he sought a massacre with the Qunari, no part of him wanted to shed blood even when he knew that it would eventually come to that, but if they truly intended to pursue him here, then he would strike without the restraint of mercy. He had come too far, given up too much and in the end they were irrelevant to him beyond stopping their advance and guiding her to him.

He had turned his back upon the eluvian now, watching her approach would serve no further purpose but to satisfy an inadvisable greed, she would make it, of that much he had no doubt. He could have used trickery to take the anchor from her without ever revealing himself, but for all that he had done to her, she deserved the awful truth, even if she would eventually wish she never knew. There would be pain, for her and for him, even with the detached nature of his person, her pain would touch him in some way and it could not be helped.

He had refrained from the temptation of invading her dreams, what little comfort he would have found there would have been stolen, and once she knew he was there she would try to reach for him, and that he could not allow. He risked everything in letting her near him now, but he would do so in order to save her life and secure the anchor, he had not risked it simply to satisfy his desire to dwell within the realms of her subconscious uninvited. There had been a time when her dreams were as open to him as any book, and he had read the pages of her life in vivid detail, memory and dream moving together to lay her history before him. To watch her grow had been something to treasure, to witness her pain in that same living colour would have been torture, and yet he had still been tempted in those long pre-dawn hours when he truly missed her.

In the far distance a huge and reptilian scream of triumph snapped through the air like a thunderclap and he allowed a short, grim smile. Of course she had set the dragon free.

Their war cries reach him now, and he can feel the deepening pulse of the anchor's pull, she had little time left and the Qunari had even less. They all stood on a far more precarious position than simply challenging the Dread wolf, they stood between him and her, this was more than enough for his cold heart to deduce that their end was necessary. They bring that blood and cordite smell with them, a tight unit of silvered flesh over highly trained muscle, they would not relent, not until the very last man, but he would spill no more blood upon the pieces of this former world.

His magic swept over them like the hand that clears a playing board of its pawns, silvered flesh turning darker, hardening them into place until they are nothing more than a parody of a battle that never quite happened. That baleful fire died in his eyes as the last of the Ben-Hassrath warriors died with his spear still poised for flight, and he turned away from the tableau he'd created, no regret or sorrow for a thing that did not have to happen, there was no room for it. What little space not yet frozen over in his heart, was filled with the knowledge that she was close and coming closer.

* * *

 _He stares down into her trusting face, hand slipping from the sharp angle of her upturned cheek, and watched love slip into confusion as his last words hung in the air between them like the ringing note of a bell. Just moments before she had been lost in a kiss that spoke more words than he could rightly give her, now her face was unguarded and he sees it all etched on her features. He might as well have driven a blade through her gut for all the pain he see's swimming into her eyes, a hurt so profound that for a moment it seems to steal her breath. Expressive as she has always been, she has had many years of practice at schooling her face when she needed to, and through all the changes of his heart she has been mostly successful at keeping anything but gentle understanding hidden away. Now she is utterly naked before him, a shaking hand lifting to her newly bared face, fingers attempting to trace what she knows is no longer there, her breath hitching in soft gasps._

 _The Dalish had turned him into a creature of fear many years ago, but he has never felt quite so undeniably monstrous as he does now. The taking of her vallaslin had been important to him, it marred everything she was, her face and her very spirit, and the more she gave in order to preserve this world, the more it had become an insult to him. But his gesture was marred, tainted, because for just one moment while his mouth had been fixed to hers and the momentum of those long forgotten feelings finally hit him hard, he had considered turning from what he owed his people._

 _Panic had found him quickly, a sharp sensation like buried glass in his abdomen. It sliced through the compelling warmth of her love and he had released her as though she had burned. For just a second she had still been caught in that moment of connection, her eyes still closed, lips still parted and face at perfect peace. He shattered that peace with just a few words._

 _She cannot stop feeling her face and his gut roils unpleasantly, instead of honouring her buy removing an offensive mark, he has simply made the gesture all the more cruel for what had followed. Now her eyes shine with hurt waiting to brim over, and he does not think he has it in him to see her cry, his body turning coward and itching to turn away from her._

 _The blow is quick as a venomous strike and it knocks his head to one side, her open palm leaving a stinging burn from cheek to jaw._

 _By the time he rights himself she is massaging her hand and the instinctual urge to bare his teeth dies the instant he meets those eyes again. The pain is gone, replaced by a rage that sharpened already angular features into a hunter's glare. Now it is his turn to feel that invisible blade, for she has never looked at him this way._

 _It doesn't last, even now he can see her visibly pulling everything back inside with one long inhale. She gathers up all that had been visible to him just moments before, and swallows it down, places it somewhere else and later he might swear that he had heard the final click of a lock as her face became as neutral as she could make it. She has let him see her true feelings for just a moment, and he deserves it, just as he deserved to wear the imprint of her anger on his face, and now she was going to make a virtue of taking the high road, because she is stubborn, and a far better person than he has any right to know._

 _" I understand. Whatever you need Solas, as always"_

 _She gives him nothing else and he deserves even less, he knows this and still he has to ball his hands into fists to stop him from reaching out as she turns away from him. It is the right thing to do and he knows it, she is dangerous and never has that been more true than in the single moment when he almost let it all go in exchange for the life she could breathe into this tranquil world. He can still taste her on his tongue and the smell of lyrium and pine still linger in her wake as he watches her leave, her back straight and head high, only the tension of sharply defined shoulder blades showing just how much she is holding in now. There is nothing more that he can do for her but allow her to leave, attempting to soothe the wound he had left would only serve to make things worse for her and not much better for him._

 _He has always known that he would have to leave her, but it should not have been like this. What made things intolerably worse was that he knew if he'd asked her to come with him, she might well have said yes._

 _"There isn't enough space, not enough to hide it all , it wants to spill out of her like too much water in the cup"_

 _He hears Cole's voice waver with the weight of what he can feel, asking why the spirit had followed them would be pointless, compassion went where the hurt was keenest. He want's to tell him to stop, that he doesn't want to hear, but beneath his denial is the surety that this, among many things, was the least he deserved._

 _"Hot, heaving hate, pull it to me like a coat. Why do i still feel his mouth on mine? Churning like a rift inside me, swallow it down and do my duty. Herald. Inquisitor. Hero. Be what i must, be what they need. They won't know that I'm breaking"_

 _He would know, even without Cole's commentary he would have known because the same pain was reflected in his own heart, old and ill used as it was. And like her, he would have to leash that pain in order to do what needed to be done. Leaving now was out of the question, he would not abandon her before the very end, even if it would have made things easier for the both of them. His spiteful mind reminded him that he also couldn't miss his chance to recover the orb, and though he hated that voice some, if not all of the time, it is here that he retreats._

 _He is ill equipped to deal with his pain or hers, and so he falls to the safe if uncomfortable truth instead, he needed the orb, and to to recover it he would have to follow her to the end._

 _"It won't last, you can't bury it forever either. She makes it real, won't let them be ghosts, and she is yours"_

 _"It cannot be that way Cole"_

 _"But it already is"_

* * *

"Solas…"

That one word was so full of relief that already he could feel the rat like creature that was guilt, clawing its way up his spine. He almost didn't dare turn to look at her, there was too much power in that face and just as much in the smooth pervasive tone of her voice, it's edges roughened on some of the words and he knew then how hard she had fought to get here. He would have given anything to just step through the eluvian and close it behind him right then, it would have hurt her but it would be a scratch compared to what he was about to do. If he walked away, stayed, told her truth or lied, he was going to hurt her. He had trapped himself in a web of love, lies and his own duty and in doing so he had trapped her too, there was nothing left to do but to wield the blade that would cut her deeper than Corypheus and all his templars ever could.

He prepared himself to face her, pulling the mask into place because he could not do it any other way, he let the cold seep in because that way he might be able to last the length of this conversation while keeping his resolve in tact. It was too soon, two years had not been enough to find an effective defence against her and he knew it the moment he heard her speak.

Green light flared and bloomed in the mirror's reflection and her scream soon followed, the sound of a far more primal pain than what might have lay in her heart, and he turned to see her on her knees , the mark pulsing in its eagerness to return to its rightful place. He was barely able to stop himself from the natural instinct to reach down and touch her and he clasped his hands behind his back as if to ward himself from doing such a dangerous thing, the grey-blue of his eyes igniting as he touched upon the marks power and bound it as tightly as it could. It would not last long, already he could feel the bonds straining as she panted and tipped her eyes up to him.

"That should give us more time. I suspect you have questions"

It was a poor welcome, he couldn't have spoken with more ice upon his tongue if he tried and was not surprised to see her brow crease together hard as she digests these words. He watched her try and fail to find words of her own and instead she held up the offending hand, her question an easy one to decipher.

"The same way i kept it from killing you in Haven….although i am much stronger now. The mark you bear was bestowed upon you by the orb of Fen'Harel. My orb"

She had been pulling herself to her feet with her staff and almost fell back to her knees upon hearing those last two words, her eyes quickly darting over his face as if to detect a lie there, or perhaps she simply hoped for one, for she was backing away from him now, confusion switching to horror and then...laughter? He gripped his wrist tighter at the small of his back as she staggered under the weight of his revelation, managing to straighten herself eventually though her legs were shaking.

"Of course you are. Of course you're Fen'Harel, because only I could fall in love with the fucking Dread wolf. Talitha Lavellan, the constant bloody accident waiting to happen!"

She laughed harder, her words broken by the jagged sound that isn't amused at all, she's horrified and hysterical and that's so much worse than angry. She doesn't even try to disbelieve it, after all the lies he had told so far and she was still willing to believe him without question, what had he ever done to deserve that?

"And now you know. What is the old Dalish curse?...May the Dread Wolf take you?"

"And so he did" The laughter died in her throat, forcing her words into a whisper, her head bowing slightly.

"I did not. I would not lay with you under false pretences" The accusation had burned him enough that he couldn't keep the touch of arrogance from his voice, as if this one act of chivalry could have cancelled out everything else he had done.

Her head snapped up and he was almost relieved to see her anger finally show itself, even if they had little time for it, he could feel the anchor's struggles, the binding that subdued it temporarily was already fraying.

"That is not what i meant. Refraining from screwing me does not mean you haven't violated me in the most insidious way possible. Did you laugh? Did it amuse you to watch my little rituals every time we came upon one of your statue's? Or was it my vain attempts to unravel the truth behind Fen'Harel that gave you that warm, smug feeling inside?"

Her tongue was a blade now, intent upon cutting him as deeply as he had cut her with the truth, and he knew she didn't believe half of what she was accusing him of or she would have tried to strike him down by now. He would have taken every wound she had to give him but there was no time and he cut in before she could form more heated words to sling at him.

"We have no time for such questions when you already know the answers. You know what I did, when the false gods finally went too far I formed the veil and banished them forever. Thus i freed the elven people, and in doing so, destroyed their world"

She shook her head over and over again, lips pressed together and hands held up as if to ward away his words. Her pale skin paler still, sweat gathering at her temple's.

"That is...i can't even begin to comprehend you locking away the fade, you of all people. It's...too much, I can barely process the idea that our 'gods' were no better than magisters…. what happens now? Your secret is out, the Qunari are dead, what was all this for?"

"My people fell for what i did to strike the Evanuris down, but still some hope remains for restoration. I will save the elven people, even if it means this world must die"

The words fell from his mouth, well practised and almost toneless, and they tasted like bitter ash on his tongue while the horror grows on a face that had only ever looked upon him with respect, devilish good humour, or love. He saw the monster that was him forming in her eyes, and called himself stupid for thinking that she could ever see him as otherwise.

"There it is again…."My people", like we are nothing but vermin or ghosts to you"

"You must understand, I awoke in a world where the veil had blocked most people's conscious connection to the fade. It was like walking through a world of Tranquil!"

She could never truly understand no matter how much he may want her to, and in the end what good would it do but to justify what he had done? All she could see now was a monster, bound to destroy everything she had saved. Talitha Lavellan had given up the only thing she ever wanted in order to save Thedas from the breach, her freedom. A freedom to roam the world without a clan or an Inquisition to call her to duty. Now that such a freedom was in her grasp, he was going to take that world away from her, how would she ever understand the reasons behind that?

"Solas, what you are saying is insane, this cannot be who you are. I would give anything to see things restored but why must an entire world have to die for the elves to return? By the void Solas, you are talking about killing everyone!"

It is now that he realises that she still had so much faith in him. He had walked away from her in the aftermath of that final fight, left with no word or explanation, expecting hate to take seed and grow in her heart. But even now she knew the truth, she still did not fully understand who he was, still thought that he could be turned from doing the monstrous, it was piteous and distressing to witness. The pleading in her eyes cut him raw, they still searched his face as if seeking a way in to the man she knew, not this cold creature who talked of more than just genocide. He could give her nothing, she was far too intelligent for her own good and it was all too easy to give her too much, he did not want her to pursue him. She saw nothing in his face but his resolve and the iron mask he'd been forced to wear, and he bore witness to the devastation this caused, nails digging into his wrist when he heard the small sound she made as that invisible knife finally found its mark at her heart.

"I hear you say these words and mean them, i see the conviction in your face. You truly mean to end this world and do you know what frightens me the most?"

She was pacing now, her hand opening and closing, the anchor tugging harder at its bonds and causing it to spasm. She had so little time and yet he has no right to steal these words away from her, so much has been taken from her already.

"I still love you. You mean to end the world and everyone i care about with it, and all i can think of is how that will destroy you from the inside out. I tried Solas, i tried so damn hard to hate you, and you even made it easy for me! Now you stand there as much a piece of stone as those bloody statues, an even greater threat than Corypheus ever was, and all i can think about is that look of need in your eyes when i first kissed you in the fade."

Her declaration hit him without warning and pried gently at that iron mask, the broken tone in those last few words slipping a dagger up into his ribcage towards his heart. No, it had not been long enough, she had no idea the siren's call that she made with such honest words, she had no sense of the way his resolve tipped precariously in the face of her misery. For such a rare creature as her to be so broken was a crime as insulting and unthinkable as her markings had once been, but it was one that he was forced to commit.

He felt the last thread snap just a breath before she screamed again and green light burst against his closed eyelids as he moved forward, this time catching her before she fell to her knees again. Even in the height of her agony she tried to pull her arm from his grasp, shaking her head and distorting the anguished sounds forced from her throat.

"Please vhenan, you are running out of time"

"Then let the bastard thing die with me then, don't become what the Dalish already think you are, don't become worse than what the Evanuris were!"

She speaks through gritted teeth as the pain abates briefly, her wrist twisting in his grip, slick with sweat and strong with panic and pain. It was his turn to be horrified now and his hand clamped down on her wrist, hard enough to bruise, holding her fast while his words rolled out on the heels of a long and terrible growl.

"I will not allow that to happen"

The irony of refusing to let her die now could not touch him, not when she was here and alive, albeit in mortal agony. It was easier to speak of the death of a world when one could stand from far away, much harder to begin his crusade with her here and now. She still struggled against him, screams strangling her desperate sobs, still trying to save him, only this time she wanted to save him from himself, an impossible task, she would die trying.

She will die if she doesn't.

He snarled at that wicked thought and jerked her up on her knees, no longer having the luxury of handling her gently, the anchor was ripping at her in its efforts to get away. He could not use his words to convince her, nor could he focus on the far too delicate task of removing the anchor while she fought him.

And so he committed yet another sin when he took her mouth with his in an effort to confuse and steal the fight in her. He had always known the effect he'd had on her, for all her calm patience with his indecisive love, she had kept her own well of need tightly bound, and he'd always known he could unravel it at a whim. It was not fair and neither was it right, but it was a tool he would use if he must, and it was a tool that cut both ways.

Even as he stalled her struggles and stole her pleading breath with lips that demanded, he felt the overwhelming want of her rolling over him like a violent wave, causing fingers to dig into her wrist and tighten at her upper arm. She was his, always his, and even after he had gone, leaving the pieces he'd made of her behind, she would still be his. It still wasn't fair and it certainly wasn't what she'd earned, but as she submitted to the urging of his tongue and permitted it's fierce entry, fair couldn't gain purchase enough to matter.

Kissing her again was a bitter ambrosia, a prelude to the self flagellation he would later inflict upon himself when he suffered the refreshed memory of her mouth against his once more. He had lived for far too long and he was once again strong, but there were some things even he was powerless against, their momentum dragging him forward and forcing him to bear down on that kiss as if he intended to devour her from the mouth down.

She returned his kiss with the same desperate nature as her plea, as if her mouth could shape a more convincing argument without words, whimpering between spared breaths when the mark pulsed again. He broke away with a harsh gasp, gravel lining his throat as he fought the urge to reclaim her mouth again, even as she screamed.

"I am so sorry, my love"

"Please don't do this, let me help you find another way"

He felt his magic flare to life and pressed his forehead to hers, closing his eyes against the next short and sudden scream as he touched upon the mark, causing the anchor to strive that much harder to find its rightful place. In the end the process was mundane for all that it should have been dramatic. For all the many ways he had hurt her in the last few minutes, she did not even feel the moment of separation beyond a profound and sudden relief from the pain. He begins to feel the first pull of his own grief now and it is here that he pulls away, before it could bind them both along with the lies and the love.

He was in love with a ghost who refused to stay a ghost, refused to become a forgotten regret, buried amidst another thousand years. He had known the disaster it would bring even as he gave into it, and now here were the fruits of his labor, alone and trembling on the floor of a broken world as he stepped back towards the mirror, her position of defeat too poignant, too naked, his own pain too close to the surface for him to offer more than a few last parting words.

"I will never forget you"

She looked at him with perfect understanding of her loss, she wore it on her face like a brand, shock and anguish following his retreating steps and he finds his feet almost stumbling in his haste to reach the eluvian, the desire to take that look from her face strong enough to make his stomach lurch painfully. Even in her defeat, she was still so very dangerous to him.

In the far background he spied the moving specks of the others, they would find her soon and pick up the pieces he had left behind, and they would be right to call him a coward for that much alone. His courage finally turns traitor now and he turned his back upon her before the idea of changing his mind could become more than a fleeting flash across his mind.

The cold touch of the eluvian enveloped him and turned the world beyond to echoes as he left her with nothing more but the reflection of her own misery.

From her grief, the Dread Wolf fled.

* * *

"What in the void do you mean you're done?"

The words beyond his side of the eluvian have been a blur of exclamations and demands for information, most of which he hadn't heard above the repeated slam of an ethereal fist against the stone walls of his sanctuary. Though the mask had slipped just enough to allow a little to slip through, everything he had suppressed on the other side of the mirror now forced its way out in wild bursts of violent magic, his rage and grief merging into fade touched fists as he literally beat at the walls with his mind.

Dorian's heated question captured his attention however, and he paused, body heaving with harsh breaths as it turned towards the somewhat distorted voice.

The Tevinter was kneeling beside her, Varric and Cassandra standing a little off to one side wearing identical expressions of disbelief as they watched her struggle to her feet. Solas winced as she tried to use a limb that was no longer there and slipped, Dorian barely saving her face from impacting the ground before he hauled her to her feet and turned her almost vacant expression to his own.

"Talitha…"

"You know what it means Dorian. I am finished, if the Inquisition is to continue it will have to do so without me"

Cassandra stepped forward now, and for a moment it looked as though her heart had been broken, and perhaps it had, the Seeker had put much of her faith in the wild Dalish woman, the Inquisition would all but limp along without it's figurehead. There was also something truly awful about the calm toneless quality of her speech, as if she were merely gathering her words and neatly filing them out of her mouth in perfect order.

"But he loves you, if anybody could convince him…" Cassandra implored, as only a true romantic could.

He watched Talitha look over Dorian's shoulder with a pained expression, "If love were enough then it would never have gotten this far Cassandra, he will not be stopped and i don't have the power to try."

Dorian shook her, a faint panic finding his words now and Solas knew why, she spoke as if she were already dead, as if they were all dead and simply waiting for the time to lie down.

"Talitha, if there was ever a time to fight…"

"No, no more. No more fighting, no more death, no more deciding who gets to live and who gets to die. No more sitting in golden thrones and deciding someones fate when i don't even have the ability to control my own, not..one..fucking...more"

She pushed at his chest and Dorian stumbled weakly, his usually verbose nature curbed in the face of her sudden determination. She cradled her the newly amputated arm and gave them the same pleading look she had given him, they could barely meet it with their own eyes.

"Can't you see that i have given enough? It is time for me to go home"

Home. A place where she had never wanted to return, that stifling place of false lore and stiff traditions that she had loved and loathed in equal measures. She had longed to be free enough to wear the whole world as her home and now he has all but chased her back to her past. He has done much to earn the shame that follows him, but nothing was quite so sinful as stealing her dream along with everything else. If she wandered the world now it would only be with the knowledge that it would all soon disappear and she was simply staring at another ghost waiting to happen.

He waves a hand towards the eluvian and it becomes smooth and unblemished once more, reflecting nothing other than the petty destruction of his possessions, born from his impotent rage. There were a dozen better ways in which he could have left her, but there had been no time and now there never could be. She was returning home to finish how she began and his road would lead further and further away from her as time went by.

He felt another sweep of fury at the unfairness of it all, that this pain was of his own doing only made it worse and he lashed out at a small wooden table, the ethereal fist reducing it to splinters before it pulled back and slammed into the floor, cracking ancient tiling on impact. His eyes darted to the eluvian and for a moment he felt the reflective twitch of that potential fist.

In the end he pulled his magic back before the impulse to smash the thing to the smallest slivers formed more than a faint gust of magic. For all that he knew it to be the right thing to do, he could not relinquish that last connection. It was the only eluvian that belonged to him, the only one he had poured himself into. That personal connection linked him to more than just the other connections in the crossroads, and so he had dared not use it until he absolutely had to.

The eluvian bore a part of his soul, in the time of his youth it might have shown him the prizes he sought in his arrogance, but he had not possessed it then. Just two years ago it might have shown him the location of his orb if he had been strong enough to reach this place. Now it would show only her if he used it for any other purpose than to travel between the others of its kind. Though this fact alone is reason enough to destroy it, he finds himself to cowardly to do it, he could not relinquish that last piece of her.

And by what right do you get to keep any part of her. Why should you be allowed to frame her life with your magic when she will be alone?

The hated voice would always choose the right moment to slip that very last knife into his thoughts. It spoke truth with no mercy and left him bleeding in the wake of its passing.

"Because she is mine"

The words are a low growl echoing in an empty chamber, and their conviction shames him even in the midst of the possessive heat that overwhelmed him.

Sooner or later the compulsion to use the eluvian again would win, he admitted this defeat miserably as he picked up a blanket and threw it over the mocking glass. Very soon it would be time to harden his heart even further, and when that time came, even her sadness would soothe some of the scars this would leave behind. He did not deserve a single moment of Solace, but what he deserved no longer mattered against two unbreakable facts that were ignorant of the vast distance between them.

She was his, and he was her Dread Wolf.

* * *

 **End Note**

 **Ok so i admit, I may be ever so slightly terrified that i have overreached myself on this one. Solas remains a very difficult perspective to write from and yet i really have enjoyed writing this. If i made a mistake with What you Owe, it was only that i started at the end. Now I'm faced with the daunting task of writing an ending you lot won't be expecting.**

 **If you truly did enjoy this first chapter, please do send a comment or kudos, or even a message should you wish to discuss the story so far, your opinions are highly valued, and they do help when our brains are feeling lazy and useless.**

 **I am well aware that I have toyed with the workings of the eluvians, but this story wouldn't work without the added extras.**

 **Oh yes, and hands up to those who truly wanted the 'slap solas' dialogue choice when he leaves us barefaced in a cave? Probably the same people who wanted to Gibbs slap Anders after his oops-Chantry moment.**


	2. Chapter 2

But it was not your fault, but mine, and it was your heart on the line.

I really fucked it up this time, didn't i my dear?

~Little Lion Man - by Mumford and Sons~

It is one of the blessings of old friends, that you can afford to be stupid with them

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

 **Chapter Two: Silent Wounds**

Haven moves with a renewed purpose under the new banner of the Inquisition. It was an influential name with a partially bloody history, but it was a name that now united soldiers, templars and even a few mages into one unit, rather than the scattered forces that have been in disarray ever since the explosion at the conclave. There is still more than enough spilt blood between the templars and their former wards for there to be a tangible and enforced distance between them. There have been a few heated arguments and one injury so far, but the true Inquisition soldiers, those that have trained under Cullen from the very beginning, have been warned and are quick to intervene. He watches a scout jog towards the canopied storage area and wonders what secrets will be whispered into the Nightingale's ear this time, if she is even half as cunning as Solas thinks she is, Leliana would already be looking out for spies.

"...will there be a new verse in the chant?"

"...Chantry has denounced us, Chancellor Roderick says…"

"But she's an elf...a Dalish elf…"

"We're fighting with the sanction of the left and right hand of the Divine….."

"Are we going to get into trouble for this?"

He passes a dozen different intermingling conversations, all of them amounting to the same thing, they fought with the authority of an Inquisition, but they were no longer backed by the institution of that authority and that was making everybody more than a little nervous. The addition of a Dalish elf mage as the Herald of their most sacred Andraste confused them all the more and was apt to make differing opinions clash. The templars were unhappy with the idea of a mage having such a position of prominence while the brothers and sisters of the chantry were having to rearrange some rather old beliefs to fit the woman into any place of sense amongst their chants.

"Say chuckles, what's another word for a bunch of fanatics flapping around because nobody knows what to believe anymore?"

He pauses at the sound of his somewhat undesirable nickname, watching Varric cross something out in the ledger propped on a board set across his knees. The dwarf is not what he has come to expect from a child of the stone, their heads are single minded and as black and white as their traditions. Varric speaks in many minds and then pours them onto pages, he lies like an artist and seems to go out of his way to be as unlike a dwarf as possible. He was also likely the only man living who could brand him as 'chuckles' and probably make it stick.

"I believe that would be called a 'schism', do you really think things will go that far?"

"Could be, I'd believe just about anything of those crazy bastards when they don't have a Divine to herd them. I'll be glad to get out from under their flapping skirts, seem's we've been volunteered to go to the Hinterlands

Solas could happily second the dwarfs desire to get out of Haven for a while, though he is still debating whether or not that should be a permanent arrangement. The mark is stable, and though the breach remained, he is confident that the mages or templars could provide the power required to close it. On the other hand, his orb was nowhere to be found even after a thorough search of the temple's remains, without the orb his efforts would be a fruitless labour, and without the Inquisition, even his agents would be at a loss as to where to start looking. First the breach and then the orb, all paths lead through this cobbled together institution and its unlikely Herald.

"I dare say the Herald will be glad of our company"

"Well we are about the only two people who haven't pointed swords or prayers at her yet"

Varric closes his book and caps the ink, taking his time putting his things away and Solas lingers because the dwarf looks like he still has something to say and is carefully choosing his words. It would be easy to dismiss Varric as a swaggering, genial rogue, though he is all these things of course, but there was magic beneath the surface, for what was the ability to create whole worlds and breathe life into them if not magic?

"You know, she's gone from being the most wanted criminal in Thedas to a figurehead for the armies of the faithful, most people get to spread that out over a little more than a day"

"Meaning?"

"Meaning that right about now she could probably use a friendly face, one that isn't human, a templar or liable to start slinging chants at her"

Varric now looks at him as though he is missing the obvious. He isn't, he knows all too well what the dwarf is implying, and he doesn't think he has the patience right now to explain why the dwarf is close to slipping into the pitfalls of most men that considered all elves to be the same. Any conversation with a Dalish elf was liable to turn disastrous when their misinformed prattling of gods and ancestors finally ignited the admittedly short fuse he possessed when it came to the subject. It was difficult to listen to anybody who wielded the fabrication of his people as history and heavily frustrating not to be able to tell them why they were absurdly wrong.

 _Varric meet's his silence with a short laugh and holds up both hands as if fighting off the impassive look that hasn't shifted from his face yet._

"Or i guess we can just hope she doesn't make a run for it. I have to say I would run at the first opportunity, I've written enough about heros to know that this doesn't end well"

He sighs when he realises that this isn't likely the first time that the 'elf' would be ushered into communicating with the 'elf', as if the pointed ears automatically forged some sort of unspoken brotherhood. Varric had a decent point at the very least, and he was hardly likely to avoid the woman forever, and whatever else she was, she held the key to cleaning up the calamitous mess he'd helped create. Varric is tactful enough to suddenly become very interested in calibrating his crossbows trigger mechanism, giving Solas the chance to slip away without comment, chilled feet stepping through the wooden gates and into a sharp gust of wind that plucks at his clothing, snow crunching sharply beneath his tread.

Over to one side the Commander barks orders to a mess of clashing steel and the heavy sound of shields coming together, their breath exhaled in clouds of steam. He'll keep barking orders for a good few hours yet and the recruits will limp back to camp later cursing his name and that unrelenting voice, but they would live longer. A sergeant appears at the former templars side, his face reddened and damp,throwing a look over his shoulder to the treeline where he came from.

"Commander, I...err, I asked her if she wanted to train and, well…"

"Spit it out Seargent, it only required a yes or no answer"

"Well she didn't say either Commander she just...threw a snowball at me, and I'm pretty sure she swore at me in Dalish"

"I think we can safely say that both those things mean 'No' in most languages Sergeant"

Solas raised a brow as he passed the two men and began to follow the Sergeant's old tracks, Varric might well have a point, just not in the way either of them might have expected. The woman was a mage and yet on the battlefield she was barely holding her own, her spells were powerful but it was clear she had no training for using them in combat. Given that she has just been placed at the head of an army one might be forgiven for expecting to find her cowering from her own responsibility somewhere.

"...Completely out of their minds, Andraste's Herald my left bum cheek, and while we're on the subject of my rather highly valued body parts, which one of you is responsible for this?!"

He pauses just at the end of a path which seems to lead to a small cabin, in front of which stands 'Andraste's Herald' currently holding her hand up in an accusing manner towards the sky and pointing to it. He can only assume she is accusing her 'gods' since she hasn't yet given him the impression that she was mad, Since it appears that no deity wishes to 'own up' to the mark on her hand she begins to pace, and though he isn't exactly hiding she doesn't appear to notice him while wrapped up in what appears to be a very self contained panic. Down in Havens dungeons, she had been filthy, shaking and appeared much smaller since she'd been doing her best not to be noticed at all. She's obviously been allowed to bathe finally, and they had dressed her in leather and binding cloth that she is tugging at irritably as she paces and mutters to herself.

He does consider turning around and walking away at this point, he did not mix particularly well with the Dalish at the best of times and this one was clearly agitated, though so far he has yet to be hit by a ballistic snowball.

"Look, i get it...very big hole in the sky and i have the magical key..mark..whatever the void this is. I'm all up for waving my hand heroically at the rifts, my objection is when they say I'm Herald to the makers bride because some old bint pushed me out of a hole"

He sighs, her words so plaintive that he can't quite bring himself to leave her there, when all was said and done, the woman hadn't asked for this, and given his own aversion to the idea of being worshipped, he couldn't fault her desire to be as far away from other people as possible. She was also next to useless in this state, hate it as she might, she was the one that bore the mark and the others could not see a nervous wreck standing in the lead, not with half the chantry already attempting to negate the claim.

"Herald.."

She spins about suddenly, her features sharp and tensed, tilted eyes centering upon him like a thrown spear, and for a moment it is easy to forget that just seconds ago she had been nervously talking to herself and waving her hand accusingly at the sky. Her pose is that of a creature who is one breath away from fleeing in those few milliseconds it takes for her brain to decide whether he was friend or foe. When she seems to decide he is not threat, those tensed muscles relax and she gives him a weary look before half falling and half sitting on a large tree stump and waving a hand which he assumes is giving him permission to approach.

"Please don't, I got the general impression you were intelligent, I'd hate it if you went and spoilt it now, we both know the only thing I'm Herald of, is extremely bad luck."

The exhausted tone and her blunt statement both give him pause, so far her opinion of him seemed to far better than 'flat ear', a phrase that has been tossed casually his way on the few occasions he'd come across the Dalish on his travels. She does not seemed particularly relieved to see that he was an elf either, if anything she seems indifferent to his ears or lack of markings, though she bears her own quite distinctly over her brow, it framed her eyes and defined the almost cat like tilt to them. Hands prop up her chin, elbows resting on knees as she regards him with a weary patience and he realises he has been observing her in silence, likely not the best method to help the woman feel at peace. He could not refute her assessment of her luck, so far it was only outweighed by his own, not that he was likely to compare at this moment.

"You realise you will be hearing that title a lot more in the days to come, it is both a shield and a target, I suspect you will need to learn to wield both very soon"

Her expression turns to exasperation, though there is a faint curving at the corner of her mouth to suggest there was amusement to be found somewhere in his dry speech. It's been far too long since he has had to engage as a social creature, those conversational joints were rusted enough that it was hard to remember that the blunt truth wasn't always the best tool for the job.

"Well aren't you Mr Sunshine, have you considered that motivational speaking isn't really your strong point? I'm well aware what this ridiculous title means, I'm scared, not stupid, but knowing and doing are two separate things and the doing involves making a lot of decisions I'm pretty sure I'm not qualified to make"

"Your decision to charge with the soldiers was a bold move, but ultimately it preserved more lives" He silently pleads that Varric never hears her call him Mr Sunshine, he never thought he would become quite so suddenly attached to 'chuckles' till now. She tilts her eyes to his face and appears to look guilty, her body hunched up as if she were refraining from squirming on her perch.

"I hate to disappoint you but that was the equivalent of me throwing a pin at a map and yelling 'that way', i didn't have a clue what i was doing, and while that did work out this time, it won't always….I'll get people killed"

This he could understand at last, the weight of decisions that held life in the balance had been all he'd known before he'd succeeded in creating the veil, and that last had been the hardest choice of all. He dares to step forward now, bending at the knees to bring himself to her hunched level, his stare unyielding once he has captured the dark blue depths of her own eyes.

"It gives me no pleasure to tell you that more will die before this thing ends, war is never kind and right now we fight the very fade. But perhaps you should take comfort in knowing you will not be forced to make every decision. Your advisors will do much of the work, you need only focus on the rifts and gaining the power to close the breach, everything else is secondary"

He refused to coddle the woman, her road was not going to be a smooth one, and while she still bore the mark he could not predict how it might end other than in death. Her advisors had given her armed support, a network of spies and the authority to use both, they were weapons she was ill equipped to use right now and that made them dangerous while she was on such a hard and fast learning curve. The breach was the immediate problem, and it was a problem only she could resolve, if she attempted to concentrate on everything else at the same time she would never make it, and not just because of her woeful spellwork. The choice of whether or not he should stay, was fast becoming an obvious one, or perhaps he was grasping at the chance to not feel like a complete monster by having another reason to stay other than his need for the orb. He has never been a selfish man, but he had been forced into some selfish choices and he was looking at one of the consequences of those choices right now.

"You make that sound incredibly easy, but I shan't argue, concentrating on the rifts sounds a lot better than leading an army to victory, though you are still the absolute worst when it comes to pep talks"

He can only offer a shrug to this, he knows his own failings all too well, old social arts that have long since gathered dust and now required stretching. At the very least she does not seem to have gone out of her way to make this an uncomfortable experience, perhaps her clans interaction with humans has taught her something of a more tolerable nature.

"Ir abelas, i was unaware you required a parade and a twenty verse speech in order to motivate yourself from that stump"

She cocks a brow at that, her expression now utterly neutral and he can almost see her trying to guess how best to answer this statement. He would be lying if he said he wasn't deliberately pushing now, so far she had been restrained from the less desirable traditions of the Dalish when it came to other elves, and so he was simply prodding at a previously sore tooth, perhaps just to see how hard she bit. She would need training and he had no patience for someone who might snap and bark at the simplest of instructions. Eventually that neutral look fades to be replaced with a surprisingly shrewd look accompanied by the curve of a grin as she stood and made a few adjustments to the new coat.

"If it's your desire to rouse the famed Dalish temper Solas, you might want to try aiming for something a little more high brow, Deshan Lavellan taught his daughter how to wield a word or two, such as imperious, and supercilious"

She takes a deliberate step past his crouched figure, seemingly assessing him as she steps back towards the thinning treeline and the still clashing swords beyond. Apparently making her mind up about something, she nods and that grin becomes less sharp as she offers a briefly genuine window to her true person.

"I'll not say you're wrong however, delivery aside I feel slightly better knowing there is at least one person who might be thinking beyond 'divine intervention', which means i might well get this thing off me before it tries to kill me again"

She waves the offending hand with its curious glow and doesn't realise how right she is. Talitha could close every rift in Thedas and that still wouldn't solve the problem of the mark. It had never been created for a mortal to bear and sooner or later it would once more strive to return to where it came from, likely killing her in the process. It would have been easier to think of her death as an unfortunate byproduct of his tragic mistake if he were simply viewing things from afar, he found it harder to be quite so pragmatic while she stood before him with smiling eyes and a sharply honed wit.

"Deshan…'They who protect the years with the help of Dirth'am'en', your father keeps the clans ancestry?"

Her head tips from one shoulder to the other and she is assessing him again, though for what he isn't entirely sure, perhaps she is trying to decide whether he is making fun of her again. Now she is laughing, a gentle sound that indicates some sort of inside joke before she speaks again.

"You're almost right, creators could you imagine my entry, 'Darling daughter, clan pariah, wandering spy of the conclave, destroyer of vicious sphincters in the sky. Herald of Andraste...disowned"

She took a bow as though having formally introduced herself and he feels both faintly irritated and amused at the same time, not a familiar state of being in the past year or so. She is intelligent, and though she may bite it would be softly so, if the guiding hand were careful.

"I wonder, did your father teach you the word, facetious?"

"Of course he did, right around the time he taught me 'pedantic', I'll see you at the gates tomorrow morning Solas, the Hinterland's await"

She leaves him no room to think of a quick enough response, let alone shout one out to her retreating back as she jogs awkwardly back towards the training camp. He remains where he is for a moment, crouched before the tree stump, his staff resting against one shoulder, his fingers moving restlessly through a pile of fresh snow and wood shavings. She was strange, a piece that only fit part of a puzzle because it had been hammered and forced in, he hadn't met a Dalish quite like her. The touches of her culture are there to see in both obvious and subtle ways, but she seemed to wear it like a mask too, one she peered from behind in small, playful ways. He picks up one of the curled shavings, turning it between his fingers, his eyes falling upon the stump where she had sat, seeing the lines etched there.

He reaches out to run fingers over the delicate grooves cut into the stumps surface, exposing lighter wood. The lines were not simply lines, they're whole composition suggested some type of movement, there was a flow to them that kept his eye moving until eventually the shape came together in his head.

It was a hare, caught in the act of leaping.

It was a month before he finally succumbed to the truly inevitable, and when he finally tugged the old blanket away from the eluvian it was with the skittish air of one who feared what they uncovered, There was naught to greet him beyond that cloth save for smooth glass and his own reflection, the eyes pinched and drawn, his mouth etched into a familiar line of exhaustion that spoke of long days and longer first it had been easy to keep her from his head, his desire to flee from his own grief as well as her own, provided the perfect conditions for him to throw himself into the first true steps towards his task. Without his orb, even with the power that remained in the mark, tearing down the veil would be a long and arduous journey that started amongst the tomes in the old library.

He had created the veil in a last desperate attempt to stop the Enuvaris once and for all, knowing all the while that creating it would be by far easier than taking it down. The more he researched however, the more difficult the task seemed, and it was only by then remembering everything he had given up, that he'd pushed himself to look deeper and delve further into the dreaming world than ever before. Of course when it came to thinking upon things that he had given up, her face would immediately come to mind, that sardonic gleam in her eye often silently asking him how long he would last before he gave in. Again he cast himself at his work, losing himself to reams upon reams of magical history, a painstaking and time consuming path that often frustrated him, but none the less kept the waiting ghosts temporarily at bay.

He'd been moving some things to get to another shelf of books when he'd happened upon his old pack, still full from when he'd last come through the mirror. It had been dropped unceremoniously along with his staff, he'd been unable to face unpacking it, and like her face, he had done his best to put them out of his mind. It was the staff that had drawn his eye and then his hand as reached out for it and lifted it from between piles of papers and instruments. Without thinking about it, he had given the staff a familiar half twist and the delicate wooden hare had flashed before his eyes.

It was a small but beautiful thing, its details so painstakingly carved that you might imagine that it would move if you blinked. It had been posed on its hind legs, nose to the air and ears alert, one tiny obsidian eye glinting in the light as it swung from a thin leather strip. He'd found it placed on a dresser in his quarters shortly after the events at adamant, she'd never spoken of it, perhaps mindful of his ever present hesitance. He in turn had wrapped it tightly about every staff that passed through his hands during the rest of their journey, until it had become as much a ritual as Talitha and her gifts to the statues of Fen'Harel. It was a silent affection both given and received, something unspoken and therefore immune to the misgivings of his mind. It was theirs.

He had forgotten long enough for this small thing to catch him by surprise, and once her face bloomed behind his eyes this time, he could not shake it from his mind.

Perhaps if he had not left her so broken, his desire to see her again would not have been exacerbated by a touch of urgency. Had she left the safety of Skyhold yet? Was she now back home, stifled once more by traditions she knew not to be true? Would she go mad with the knowledge she held, knowledge she would not dare repeat for all that it meant? Could there truly be some peace for her now?

All of these questions hounded him, but the last followed him like a weeping spectre, hanging behind his shoulder and constantly reminding him of the way she had looked just before he'd returned through the eluvian, that moment when she realised that he truly was going to leave her again, her broken gaze, as if something behind her eyes had shattered and he'd merely been staring into fragments. The haunting of his thoughts would not be abated by throwing himself into work or drinking to excess, he'd even tried outrunning them in his other form and found that they chased just as fast, all except the weeping spectre that never got far enough away from him to ever need to chase.

Now he sat slumped in a chair before the mirror, this newly acquired nemesis that promised to show him exactly what he wanted if only he would give in, or at the very least, stop lying to himself that there was ever a question as to whether he was going to use it glared at his own reflection, disgusted with himself, he might have grown stronger since he had awoken, but he was still weak in many ways, she made him weak and he would have dearly loved to have been able to hate her for that. But he made himself weak too, as proven by the way he finally lurched forward in the chair, a slender hand touching upon the polished glass, causing silvered ripples to expand and then excite, glowing faintly as it began to churn like rough water.

"Her"

The word was dry and cracked, as though he had broken some ancient seal simply by uttering it, while eyes closed against the brief flare of light. For a moment there is nothing but silence and he hardly dares open his eyes, as if this last laughable barrier stood a final chance to stop him from voluntarily plunging into the hidden depths of his desires and losses.

A bear there was, a bear, a bear!

All black and brown and covered with hair.

The bear! The bear!

Oh come they said, come to the fair!

The fair? She said, but I'm a bear!

All black and brown and covered with hair.

The sound hit him like a physical force, stealing his breath and drawing a rash of gooseflesh along the back of his neck while the words of that ridiculous and achingly familiar song pried at closed lids. He heard the parched shuffle of leaves being kicked aside and gripped the arms of his chair, knowing he had already lost and was now just too stubborn to relent until the very last moment. If only he could simply sample the sight of her and be done, perhaps this would not make him feel so weak….

And down the road from here to there.

From here! To there!

Three boys, a goat and a dancing bear.

They danced and spun, all the way to the fair.

The fair! The fair!

He bowed his head with a shudder, her voice neatly conjuring an image of strong legs kicking at leaves, that wide grin moving around the words, voice strong and clear in a small moment of unobserved frivolity. She had tried to fit as many of those moments in as she reasonably could while the whole of Thedas had eyes upon her, and he had been fortunate to bear witness to most, to have been the reason for some.

Oh, sweet she was, pure and fair!

The maid with honey in her hair!

Her hair! Her hair!

The maid with honey in her hair!

A deep bark accompanied her voice then, and finally, he brought his eyes open slowly, almost imagining that he could hear their protesting creak as a briefly out of focus world greeted him, the dim light from the candles on their various perches momentarily harsh. Old habits drew his eyes to legs bared just below the knee, the wrappings long since discarded in her perpetual need to feel the world beneath her. He'd always been able to tell where she had been by looking at those roughened feet and seeing what had stuck there, like the gold coloured leaves that clung to her ankles now. He'd lost count of the times he would imagine how it would feel to slide a hand along one slender ankle to cup the muscles at her calf, to feel them tauten then tremble slightly, how often the urge to bend and pluck at a clinging strip of grass or brush away a dried smudge of dirt became almost overwhelming. Such little things should have been ridiculous, but the tiny intricacies of his attraction, those small and inconsequential desires were like mountains to a man who held back so much and remembered so little when it came to lifting away the mask.

The Inquisition garb and masterwork armour had also been discarded, she was once again artfully draped in Dalish spun fabrics cinched together by a thick leather belt. Again he had privately thought on how easy it would have been to slip fingers into the wide buckles of that belt, to feel how well that leather molded to her hip and waist before just a few tugs loosened it and he would be able to unwrap her piece by piece, how the fabric would feel clutched hard in his fingers as he kissed her. He made a small noise in the back of his throat as memory blew upon the dwindling coals of desire and made them glow with a deeply buried heat.

He threw his eyes to her face now, like tugging the bandage from an old wound. He found her eyes and found himself lurching forward as if struck from behind, one hand steadying himself on the eluvian's frame as she gazed back at him unknowing, For a moment he had forgotten that she couldn't possibly see him, for a moment he had been almost certain she had, for her song had paused and her head was cocked to one shoulder as if she might have heard the heavy drag of his chair across the floor.

That deep, booming bark came again and her attention was drawn to something out of the mirrors range of vision until something large and dark grey bounded into sight, all drooling jaws and rapidly swinging tail, carrying a branch three times the length of its own body, one end weighed down by a clump of still-green leaves. He watched her drop to her haunches and tried not to feel breathless as folds of layered cotton parted to expose one scraped knee and a triangle of bare thigh. He hadn't forgotten how all these small things had worked so unconsciously hard to undo him over time, he'd simply put those memories away because their flame could never be quenched after what he has done.

"I think perhaps Cullen might be training you to overreach just a little my fine furry friend, that thing isn't going into my basket"

The dog barked happily, dropped the stick, then picked it up with a renewed enthusiasm as she indicated to the woven basket at her hip, it's strap cutting across her chest with the weight of firewood she'd stored in there.

"Fine then, you can carry it yourself if you're so insistent"

Once again the dog barked, lost his stick and picked it up before bounding towards the treeline, the heavier end dragging absurdly along the ground to sweep an erratic pattern in the leaves, while she heaved herself to her feet again and resumed kicking idly at the carpet of leaves in search of dry wood. The snapping of twigs and muttered cursing announced a less than graceful presence in the woods, followed by another distant bark and a sharp cry of pain. A minute later Cullen came limping into the clearing, the mabari half bounding and half dragging its recently conquered tree branch behind it. The Commander gave the animal a reproachful look and then half frowned as he turned to observe her patiently wry grin.

"Don't look at me like that, he picks those things up to impress you and invariably manages to catch me in the ankles in the process, I'm starting to suspect you've ensorcelled him"

She snickered and tossed him the lump of wood in her hand before resuming the drag of one foot across the leaves searching for more, the Commander falling into step beside her. They are unusually silent as she guided them around the circumference of the clearing, stooping to pick up more wood and adding it to the pile in Cullen's outstretched arms and Solas finds himself lulled by her movement, the human sliding out of focus in favour of the way her hand plunged wrist deep into brown and gold. However Talitha was not one to settle amidst a pointed or awkward silence and she finally stopped and cocked a brow at the stoic ex Templar.

"So I'm guessing you drew the short straw, come on, out with it"

She sounded tired but faintly amused, perhaps due to the striking hand-caught-in-the-cookie-jar expression Cullen now wore, his hands now fumbling with the sticks, some of them dropping back to the forest floor, excuses already threatening to stutter over his lips until he noted her expression and sighed.

"Fine, you caught us, but you had to know it was coming. Talitha none of us wants this for you, we all know what going back home means"

The famed glint does not die in her eyes but her shoulders do sag now as she softly exhaled through her nose and rested her hand on the end of one stick protruding from the basket in an unconscious imitation of the way the Commander often gripped the pommel of his sword in his natural stance. She has picked up a hundred little mannerisms from others, that steel trap mind of hers stealing parts of her friends to live on in her long after she would part from them.

"Cullen, I can't stay with the Inquisition, I'd be no good to y-"

Cullen gave up his war with the armful of sticks and dropped them much to the confusion of the mabari who dropped the branch and helpfully plucked up one of the fallen, eyes tilted up to his masters face with an expectancy that would be patient as the grave.

"Damn it Talitha it's not about that! Maker, if anybody ever deserved to say enough is enough it would be you, but you're not just leaving the Inquisition behind, you think we don't notice that you're discarding pieces of yourself along the way?"

Now that glint does die and for one instant her eyes narrow before she looks away and strides over to a particularly thick pile of leaves, kicking at them with a little extra vhemence. One of Cullen's hands twitched as if stalling an unconscious desire to reach out and touch her, the slightly pained but determined expression on the man's face a familiar one, and Solas had to wonder how things might have turned out had he not been there to steal her heart. Would she now be happy, safe and whole if she had been privy to Cullen's deeply hidden affections? Solas had only been privy to the suspicions because he recognised some of the same symptoms in himself.

"Cullen that's not something I want to discuss, it's too soon, too private"

"It stopped being private around the time he threatened to end our world. You move among us, smiling, laughing and still tending to our bruised egos and all those crisis of conscience and you think we don't see that you aren't really here, you're still there kneeling before that blasted mirror wondering when he's going to step back through"

The words were gentle but their meaning cut to the quick and Solas observes the white of he knuckles as she gripped that piece of wood, fighting the unfair desire to snap at the man behind her. He can still read her face so easily, it's subtle changes and micro expressions a well loved tapestry that had never faded in his mind, it had simply been folded up carefully and put away. She rocked up on the balls of her feet before settling again and he knew that her desire to run from this conversation was strong, Cullen must have noted it too because he chanced another step towards her, stopping when her shoulders tensed and her head jerked down, the rough fall of escaping hair shielding her fiercely pinched expression from the Commander. Cullen didn't advance any further but he continued to speak, the thrumming tension long contained touching upon his words.

"He broke you again and we picked up the pieces, only a lot of them don't fit anymore because you're too full of him, you carry the weight of his blame on your own shoulders and I could kill him for that much alone because he of all people should know why that's a crime"

You could try Commander

The virulent thought rasped across his mind even as those softly heated words struck him somewhere in the midsection. He'd barely given a thought as to how his betrayal would mark the rest of them, his head had been too full of her while trying not to be, it somehow seemed harsher coming out of Cullen's mouth and he felt himself mourn that tone even as his own arrogance blew more heat onto those coals and smirked at the thought of such a challenge. Talitha did not round on him or scald him for poking his nose in her business, she had spent too many patient hours drawing their stories from them, hearing their anguish and the things that made them glad to be alive, she would have considered it unworthy of herself to not allow them the same privilege.

The look she turned Cullen's way is one of barely contained misery and Solas feels himself cut all over again, the way the pain hovered just behind her eyes, unwieldy and so very heavy, the downward pull of her mouth, as though she had bitten into something bitter. Cullen looked as though he might well have taken every word back if it would just take that look from her face, but then determination seemed to stiffen his spine again, though his words were gentler now he had her full attention.

"I know you can't hate him, I know you can't fall out of love. But I also know you're going home to fade away because that's what you think you deserve and that thought sickens me. You deserve everything you ever wanted, you earned it. Please, for us….for me, if this ends up being our last few years...we'd be better off for knowing you were actually living in them"

The Commander had become more verbose in the time he'd been away from Skyhold, or perhaps the matter was simply too important for his usual fumbling speech to interrupt. Either way, she tipped her gaze up to Cullen's, her face solemn and caught in the act of actually considering his point, she had never made any of them think that she paid mere lip service to their thoughts. Cullen and the rest of them wanted the same things for her that he did, namely for her to be free and left alone to wander as she had desired back before her world was changed. To think of her slinking back home with her tail hung between her legs was a picture none of them were able to reconcile with. He watches her struggle to find words, she won't tell Cullen a beautiful lie because she's terrible at it and thus forced always to be honest or blunt, for a kind heart that was something of an affliction and a gift all at once. Cullen appeared to note her difficulty because now he did reach for her her and the hand that settles on her shoulder was an uncomplicated comfort and reprieve for which she looks utterly relieved, it seemed to be enough that his message appears to have sunk in. She chose a moment of precarious balance up on her tiptoes to press a chaste kiss to that stern, stubbled jaw and this easy sign of affection causes Solas' mouth to cramp in remembrance of those soft lips while Cullen merely looks like someone took one of those sticks to the back of his head.

"You are a good man Rutherford, and i can promise to live life to the fullest about as much as you can promise to forgive yourself"

Now he felt pride fitting enough for his own namesake, it was easy to mistake her aloof nature with a mind that hardly thought beyond the next step and then the next, but she was sharp, quick and oh so sneaky with her words. She had not told the Commander that his request was impossible, she merely offered the man an example of how hard it was to fight your very own nature, and indeed, Cullen has gone from looking slightly dazed, to protesting and then to a resigned slumping of the shoulders and a grim, knowing smile. He got the point well enough and threw a conceding nod as he bent down to pick up the dropped sticks, briefly wrestling the mabari for the last one before he spoke again.

"Your point is duly noted, also...i hate it when you do that. You'd have run circles around a chantry mother, come on let's get back to camp before Varric starts making up wild stories"

He hefted the pile of sticks in his arms and made a sweeping gesture towards the end of the clearing as though he were ushering her through the doors of the winter palace. She mocked a curtsey and they walked side by side, the dog bringing up the rear, it's tree branch not forgotten.

"I'd worry more about the game of wicked grace he's got planned, Josie's all fired up for winning the shirt off your back, again!"

"Oh for, am i ever going to be allowed to live that down?"

"Half the inn got to see the 'little Commander', so no, not likely. I hear Sera made sketches. Hey but on the bright side, we're in the woods, if it happens again the worst that can happen is you might surprise a bear, instead of a group of chantry sisters and one very impressed chevalier"

There was a half hearted growl and then the former Knight Captain and Commander to the armies of Skyhold, pushed the Inquisitor into a bush.

He closed his eyes against her raucous laughter and the sound began to fade until he was left with the silence that was punctuated only by the guttering crackle of dwindling candle flames and his own breath. He didn't need to open them again to know that the image had faded, which made little difference because the the renewed sight of her had etched her face across the inside of his skull once again. He had allowed her to infect him again, willingly, like a man who knew better than to touch upon a hot stove and risks another burn anyway. His refreshed want of her spread through him like a quiet wildfire, partially burying his dismay to see her confirm that she was indeed giving up all that she had hoped for in favour of returning home in some sort of defeat or punishment.

Why should the manner in which she returns home matter? You will watch it burn either way will you not?

Once again he is gripping the arms of his chair while that voice cut through the wildfire and the soft layers of his regrets and desires surrounding her, dropping the words heavily between his ears like claws sliding neatly into his brain. It was his own voice of course, the part of him that even now grew stronger, the part of him that called for pragmatism over sentiment. It was cruel and often spiteful and it always spoke the truths he would like to deny, he hated it but he relied upon it in those times when he did not think he could get to his feet again. The voice dared him to deny now and all he could do in response was grip harder until the faint smell of woodsmoke reached him and he opened his eyes, hands jerking from the chair, their imprints briefly smouldering before the tiny embers died, leaving the wood blackened and still faintly warmed.

He suddenly felt more tired and drained than he had in the last few months and hauling himself out of the chair made him feel old, his heavy limbs uncooperative and stiff with tension. He let his feet carry him to a narrow bed tucked behind a large screen elaborately carved with a striding six eyed wolf, deliberately casting his eyes away from the eluvian before another compulsion realised the ease of which its need could be satisfied. When he fell onto the bed with no intention of undressing he dragged his thoughts of her down with him, the contrasting images of strong legs and a soft smile stroking across his brow like a cool hand. His thoughts of her need not always come at the cost of pain, that was the work of a subconscious which thoroughly believed he should be punished, but he is too worn for even that to interrupt the slow mental pan of her body from top to bottom. He reaches the memory of those eyes, blue and dark and unnervingly expressive, their depths unchartable, and when sleep finally and blessedly stole him away, his last thought was of falling forward into their waters.

He stands in the midst of a battlefield that has not been and all is silent. The combatants are a clash of blade and bow, stolen snarls and berserker screams etched upon their faces with no sound to lend them power. They move as though underwater, or perhaps he simply moves within a time of his own here, the rules are not always clear. Blades cut and thrust as if pushing through thick tar, their impact no less terrifying when kissing then parting flesh. Arrows glide through the air almost lazily, their flight ending in the same devastating way as a normal arrow should, but the slow motion of their victims fall lends an almost balletic grace to the ending of a life. One passes into his back and out through his chest, leaving nothing behind but the sensation of a cool wind slipping through him, no wound or torn cloth to indicate the strike, and he suddenly knows he could walk through a forest of swords here and never feel their sting.

As this thought leaves him, the offending arrow captures its target and the blood is a briefly suspended streak of crimson that holds his eyes, following a single drop as it floated down and landed with an almost artistic accuracy upon a dead man's cheek, where it rolls like one last tear. He is walking through the heaving, bristling throng, not consciously moving his feet but seemingly on an inevitable path, one his body was determined he reach regardless of his mind's opinion on the matter. He does not mind, the silence amidst the brutality is almost calming despite the implications of its warriors.

The emblazoned eye of the Inquisition shone on pauldrons and shields, it glared at him from the chests of leather and mail clad soldiers, some laying in the wet mud, their own eyes unseeing. His own people were caught in the opposing force, and just as many fell or lay amongst the gathered dead, and his feet step over them as well as the army of the faithful. He is curiously unaffected by what should have brought distress, but just as his feet had an inevitable path, his mind seems to find his surroundings negligible as it seeks out something else, guiding his eyes across the slow motion thrash of bodies that always seemed to naturally part whenever he came near.

The occasional blade sweeps through him on it's way to someone else, and he would think himself a ghost here if he could not feel the give of the mud between his toes.

He sees her standing at the other end of a natural line that has carved its way through those still fighting and he knows without seeing the subtle and far away ripple of her Dalish robes, that she moves within that same other time as him. His feet do not falter and nor does his heart, for she, like the path, is inevitable here. They walk towards each other with no haste in their steps, time will hold for them, there is no question of that in this place where he is strongest.

Her lower legs are streaked with mud and gore yet she passes through as unharmed as he, nothing has the power to cut or peirce either of them here.

Their eyes are locked, a twin focus fixed upon one point, unbroken by any obstacle but the remaining space between them and that dwindles further even now, until she is finally standing before him, close enough to touch. As if given a signal the tide of war washes over the path they have made, until he and she stand within a circle of cleared space, the voiceless battle still raging on as he looked down into a blue dark enough to appear black in the shade of war.

She reaches out to touch his face and he snatches at that hand, a dark bruise slowly blooming from where fingers and thumb press into her elegant wrist. She does not flinch or even move at all, her expression full of hopeless longing that he knows his own face must mirror.

"Ar lath ma"

 _Her voice washes over him in a warm tide_ heard clearly in this unnatural silence and he tugs her just close enough that the layred hem of her robes brush his legs, while he becomes, dimly aware of a wet heat coursing down his chest. But now she is pressed there too, a hand at the small of her back drawing her in as he bows his head to steal the promise of her mouth, ignorant of the way her warmth spilled through the fingers resting at her back. Hungry mouths caressed, bruised and sucked in small desperate snatches, each one building a mutual fever until he breaks and spears his tongue past the seam of her lips, feeling her shudder and jerk against him, while something white and hot swept across his back.

He's released her arm to grip at her waist, and beneath his palm he feels supple leather and cloth split as he lashed the agile slick of his tongue against her own, the sudden rush of more living warmth gathering beneath his hand and soaking into the cloth beneath.

"Ar lath ma"

She whispers it again in the brief space between that breathless kiss and the next, and he feels the words cut another wound cross his back. Yet he cannot release her, cannot find it in himself to let her slip away from his grasp, even when the sweep of his lips along her throat brings her blood to his mouth. The dream should have unnerve him, but he takes it in his stride, calmly letting it play out, understanding the macarbe message on display here without having to think too hard.

He accepts the silent battle that still slowly rages about them, he accepts the fallacy of their kiss and knows that she is merely a conjuration of his mind, made up of all the parts of her he kept in memory, and he accepts that he doomed himself to such dreams the moment he gave in to the lure of the eluvian, the lure of her.

Hands leave ugly mottled bruises in their rush to posses as much of each other as possible, fingers tearing ragged lines over skin, lips and tongues driving blades of their own making into and across their flesh until they are both dressed in crimson and pale as milk. It is her voice that cuts him deepest now, and as she murmurs faintly into his kiss he can feel the piece of every syllable.

He breaks away with a pained gasp and as she opens her mouth to speak again, his hand closes over her mouth, stalling that fatal blow from her tongue, that mottled colour already seeping from beneath his fingers while his eyes burned cold.

"I would find a way to keep you, ma vhenan"

His words do what his want for her would have eventually accomplished. She screams behind his hand and her skin momentarily cracks with veins of green fire until she shatters in his hands, a million pieces of ash that is swept away on the passing of another harmless arrow. Yet those words were not just a weapon for her, he has struck his own mortal blow, for he knows he had spoken the hidden truth rather than simple sweet words.

He falls to his knees, hands sinking into the mud and filth of a true battle, the langour of his limbs becoming heavier until he has to let himself fall. As he lays there dressed in wounds forged between them, he hears a low growl and forces his eyes to open, finding himself staring inches away from a pair of amber eyes set either side of a dark muzzle.

"You already know the way Dread Wolf"

He feels an instant of sickened horror at the words that appear in his head, before the dark wolfs jaws leapt at his face and his subconcious finally fled to a safer corner of his mind.


	3. Chapter 3

And you could have it all

My empire of dirt

I will let you down

I will make you hurt

 _~Hurt -covered by johnny Cash~_

 **Chapter Three: Taking the weight**

He did not wake refreshed, the clothing he still wore was slightly damp with sweat and his head felt full of burrs that rubbed and scratched at the inside of his skull as he moved to sit up. The heavy fog of exhaustion had been lifted however, leaving him to feel washed out and slightly light headed. Hands scrubbed up and down his face, wiping away the last vestiges of sleep and blurring the room around him for a moment. When it came back into focus so did the eluvian and all its implications as well as the possibilities it represented. He sighed and turned his back upon the blank glass, peeling his clothing away to stand at a small basin and wash away the grime left behind by his strange dream. It wasn't often that his own sleeping mind would offer up such a metaphorical gathering of thoughts, he'd learned to tug at the structure of dreams to bring them to a more ordered kind of sense, last night he hadn't even thought to do so, he'd simply allowed it to play out it's macabre message to the end.

"You already know the way dread wolf"

He stood hunched over the basin, water dripping from his jaw while that voice ghosted in his head, a ripple oozing from his spine to coat his upper body in goose flesh. He was used to his pragmatism and spite finding its own voice in the privacy of his head, but that voice had no business finding purchase in his mind after all this time.

Still, the strange behaviour of his dream had cleared his head on some matters, and what had seemed a desperate struggle with his own will now came with a very simple solution. He was not done with her, or at least the pull of seeing her still was too strong to ignore, and so he wouldn't. It didn't seem much of a solution to begin with, but knowing that he would soon succumb willingly to what he had fought for well over a month, allowed him to get on with what needed to be done without feeling the eluvian's stare at his back.

When he had washed, dressed and eaten a ravenous breakfast he set himself to work. There was no change to his routine but for the knowledge that he did not have to fight himself over a losing battle today. His time was spent sorting through several boxes of rough crystals that had been hewn from all over Thedas, all of them needing to be tested. He spent hours taking them out one at a time, striking them gently with a tuning fork and either tossing them aside when their resonance displeased him or placing them in another box on the cluttered table. There were remarkably fewer crystals beginning to gather in the latter box. Her face occasionally rose up in the calm waters of his thoughts, but this time he was able to brush it gently aside, knowing that he would look upon the real thing in his own time.

It might have seemed as though by giving in he was giving up, and in a way he was, but it was to be on his own terms and that made all the difference, made it less like torturing himself.

He did use the mirror later that morning, but it was one of his agents that appeared before him when the silver ripples parted, naught more than a scout amongst the Inquisitions ranks but still firmly in place at Skyhold. In the end the man only confirmed what he already knew, most of Skyholds integral occupants had left three days ago with the Inquisitor. She'd held a gathering in the great hall and said her goodbyes, then they had slipped out the gates at dawn the next morning.

One might be forgiven for thinking they had left their stronghold vulnerable with so many key members of the Inquisition now travelling to the elf run city of Wycombe, but his people had already ascertained that each of the advisers were training other promising members of the Inquisition. This had begun almost as soon as they returned from the Winter Palace, not simply so they might accompany their former leader home, but because they took his plan seriously and perhaps saw the many scenarios in which they might not survive. The fight had to go on, to the last man if need be and it was impossible not to respect that, their deaths would mark him in a way many others wouldn't, and he hoped that it would be a long time coming before he had to endure it, even as he slowly inched his way towards that very outcome.

He kept himself busy until mid afternoon, letting time stretch before him like a lazy cat until the moment it simply seemed appropriate to get up from the table that now overflowed with discarded crystals, and move to the chair he had left sitting in front of the eluvian. He held his own trepidation steady, like a man holding a full bowl of water while on a tightrope, aware that if he was going to do this to himself he would strive for a little more dignity in his obsession.

In the end he would likely fare no better with his meticulous self imposed rules in place, but it made him feel less of a weak minded fool when he could step up to the polished glass with some semblance of calm, rather than collapsing into that chair when he finally couldn't take her complete absence anymore. It was a lesser of evils he would gladly take in preference to desperate measures. With the eluvian he was always just a step away from being near her and that was one step too far.

Now his fingers slid down the mirror's engraved frame as he lowered himself almost primly into the chair, shedding the barriers he'd placed in his mind while he worked, much like someone would shed a coat after returning home on a long journey or a gruelling days work. He fed his anticipation just a morsel, wondering where he would find her when the eluvian opened up under his command, holding back the impulse to touch that silvered surface a little longer just to prove to himself that he could.

When he finally did touch the mirror's surface, he didn't even have to say the word, it flowed from his mind in a series of mental pictures and sensations that spoke it loud and clear. The rippling of that smooth glass occurred almost instantly this time, and he sat back in the chair as its image began to clear, releasing a breath he had been unconsciously holding.

The wild hart was easy to recognise once it swam into view, the beast had spent plenty of time nudging him in the back and rifling his pockets with blunt teeth for errant food Talitha would drop in them when he wasn't looking. Salshira stood placidly with his mistress on his back, as she watched all but Cassandra disappear beyond city gates, a swell of cheers seeming to greet them, causing the Seekers horse to sidestep nervously till she quieted it. Talitha was still watching Blackwall awkwardly 'assisting' Josephine through the gate when Cassandra turned to study her face and the way she seemed to sag in the saddle when the last of them had gone through the gate.

Solas found himself frowning as her image turned the Hart away from the gate to face Cassandra's discerning stare, her face bore the marks of fatigue, and though her eyes were settled upon the Seeker she seemed to be looking much further away, the thousand yard stare easily noted by the taller woman who only frowned deeper and leaned forward in her saddle to touch a hand to her wrist.

"I am not convinced you are well enough to go the rest of the way alone, let me accompany you"

It seemed to take half a second too long for her to respond, and when she did it was as though she came out of a daze. He watched her literally force her face to once more flow with animation, though there was little she could do to improve her colouring or the faint bluish tinge beneath her eyes.

"Nonsense, it's but a mile in a straight line, and there will already be eyes watching for my approach from the forest no doubt, I'll be fine"

The Seeker chewed visibly at the inside of her mouth and tightened her hand on the reins hard enough for her mount to throw an irritated snort over its shoulder. Talitha laughed and it was a good imitation, but again there was just a touch of something wrong there. If he had struck that sound with a tuning fork as he had done with the crystals, there would have been a discordant note among the melody of her voice.

"Admit it. You don't want to go into that city any more than i do, all those cheering and adoring fans, you'll be asked to tell the dragon story over and over again, or be mobbed by big men in shiny armour...come to brandish fiendish poetry at you!"

The deadpan expression on the Seeker's face only prompted more laughter, but again it seemed more an automatic response, learned over the time she spent sharing such easy back and forth humour with Cassandra in the last few years. The Seeker waited patiently for Talitha's laughter to die before her face softened again, it was easy to see why Varric firmly believed that amongst her many gifts, the Dalish Inquisitor had a knack for removing sticks from uncomfortable places. Cassandra was still something of a force of nature, but time in the Inquisitors company had given her the opportunity to see beyond the black and white of order and duty. Solas would never allow himself to underestimate the woman, but there was something to be said for the way she looked to Talitha, a protective nature that went beyond standing before her as a human shield. He got the impression that the Seeker was learning that she could not protect the woman from everything the world threw at her, an uncomfortable realisation for someone used to an ordered or direct solution to everything.

"I worry for you. I know Cullen spoke to you last night and i would not trouble you with the same words, but I will not rest easy knowing you are alone"

"Cassandra, from the sound of our scouts reports and my father's letters, you can't swing a squirrel in that forest without hitting a Dalish, I'm hardly going to be alone"

The Seeker huffed and exasperated sigh and looked down at her hands on the reins. The woman still had trouble expressing herself at times, and though Talitha's expression hinted that she wasn't really wanting another deep conversation, she none the less waited for the woman to gather her thoughts. Like Cullen, Cassandra had earned the right to voice her misgivings.

"That is not...they do not know. None of them can even begin to imagine what it is you went through, the things you had to do, what you know. They will weave your story into their legends but none of them will understand like we do, you will constantly feel as though you stand apart from them even as they embrace you."

The Seeker was clearly speaking from some form of experience, her careful words carrying just a touch of a pleading edge. The words also had a ring of truth, something he could see Talitha accepting, as if she already knew. She likely did, but then she'd stood apart from her people long before she had happened upon the Conclave.

"There are some things they do not need to know, not until they have to. You forget my brothers too, they never gave a fennec's fart in a tin whistle about what anybody else thought, I'll have them at my side. Unless of course you want to take one of them off my hands, Eliovron is big as a bear but once you wash him and learn to keep him off the furniture I'm sure you'll have him writing Orlesian sonnets within a month"

Cassandra made an exaggerated sound of disgust and Solas knew that she, like him, had learned the fine art of knowing when Talitha was gently but firmly urging you away from a subject. She rarely became impatient or angry, her humor was enough to deflect most of it, and if you hadn't caught on by then, she would run a flaming verbal ring around you until you either forgot the point you were trying t mske, or somehow managed to see things her way, a fact that Cullen learned slowest of all whenever they came upon a conflict of interests.

"Very well, at least allow one or two of the scouts to follow you at a respectable distance, you will not even know they are there, they will return when you cross into the forests borders"

Cassandra continued as if they were back to the beginning of their conversation and Talitha seemed to take the reprieve with some gratitude for she made a show of feigned exasperation before nodding to her friends request just as another chorus of cheers came from the other side of the cities walls. The elves of Wycombe owed much to Inquisition and it sounded as though they were just getting started on showing their gratitude, much to Cassandra's distress, her expression more than a little pained as she looked over her shoulder then back to Talitha.

"Don't look at me Lady Seeker, I've done more than my share of crowd pleasing, go bask in the reflected glory of your adoring fans, I'll see you all tomorrow evening"

Cassandra watched her turn Salshira towards the forest and her frown returned, then deepened before she called out and urged her horse a few steps closer, lowering her voice with a pointed gleam in her eyes.

"You know he will have agents in the city, likely the forest too"

Her suspicion hardly surprised him, he did not believe any of them wouldn't have recognized the scope of his reach by now, they had been quietly moving their own game pieces after the Winter Palace, and some of Leliana's people would be trained to think like their enemy.

"I know, they will watch me for a time, I rather doubt they will make formal contact, Solas has what he needed from me. I can't say it isn't incredibly frustrating to not be able to hate him for that, he sort of ruined the opportunity by saving my life"

Her words touched him like a wasp's sting, yet he couldn't refute her position, he'd saved her life but what kind of life had he left her with. He couldn't help but know she would look upon the family that awaited to greet her and for just a moment see them as they would be in just a few years time.

"Then why did you not keep her?"

He ignored this internal dialogue, bored with the same question over and over again because he had answered it to himself numerous times already. The path he followed was not meant for her, and he could live several more thousands of years without ever having to see her horror of him, a reaction that was all but guaranteed given the things he would have to do. The love in her might have been strong enough to take it at first, but eventually he would kill every last bit of what he treasured about the woman the closer he came to his goal.

Hooked temporarily by his own thoughts he missed the final words between the two women, but Cassandra didn't look any further convinced about her comrades well being and he supposed Lavellan would feel her eyes on her back until she was out of sight. Their strange relationship had intrigued Solas, the unlikely pairing getting off to an expected bad start. Much like him however, Cassandra had eventually become privy to the woman beyond the ears, the tattoos and the ever present mark. The two had forged a mutual respect that had long since matured into a tightly knit friendship he wouldn't have been able to guess at back when Talitha had worn chains and the Seeker had the weight of a dead Divine on her shoulders.

That was her all over of course, there wasn't one of her companions who hadn't been thoroughly ambushed by her good nature and relentlessly wicked sense of humor. Coupled with a fierce loyalty and a forgiving heart, even Vivienne had not been immune to her charms, and the two women practically disagreed on everything.

For someone who had longed to roam Thedas in solitude, she was very good with people.

"Again"

She pushes herself away from the empty weapon rack, rubbing at her hip where his staff had struck her and knocked her into the discarded pile of junk shoved in one corner. She huffs a strand of hair out of her eyes and bounces the blunted blade of her own staff on the rough stone tiles, a signal that she is once again ready. He tries the same move to see how much she has learned from that last blow, a swift upwards spin of his staff, swiping the bladed end dangerously close to her face, forcing an instinctual jerk of the head, giving him barely a second's window to step in sidelong as he reversed the staff, the thick wooden end sweeping for the other hip.

A small grunt bursts from her lips as his weapon is knocked away before it can land, the momentum throwing his arm back and he neatly ducks the swing she aims for the side of his head. Still crouched he brings the staff about in a circle with both hands now, the end swung towards bare ankles, but she's learned from the first time and her feet all but dance over the oncoming strike. She's quick, as demonstrated by the way he has to throw himself to one side to avoid the lance like jab towards his left shoulder. The Staffs blades were blunted and the wood was more yielding than the usual materials, but that was hardly the point here.

He was prone now, a dangerous position for anybody to be in during combat, and she isn't shy enough to not take the opportunity, her continuous attempts to pin him between the stone and her staff forcing him to concentrate on dodging rather than striking again. Her face is pinched hard with concentration, cheeks burning with hectic spots of colour as she continues to try skewering him. He's not once told her to hold back, she didn't have time to learn the easy way, though as it happens, he does not credit her quick way of learning to the few hard knocks she's taken. He's only ever had to show her a move once, and though she didn't perform them with the true finesse given over years of practice he hasn't had to do more than suggest improvements.

She's panting now, getting frustrated as he continues to roll and jerk his way out of her strikes, inching his body back a bit at a time, making her follow him, until his back fetches up against iron bars and the next strike he dodges slips between them. Long fingers wrap about the mid point of her extended staff and he pulled, yanking her forward a couple of steps, close enough to plant his foot in the soft meat of her belly. The blow is pulled of course, but it's enough to push her back, the bladed end of her staff catching on the bars and forcing her to drop it.

He is on his feet as soon as there is room to do so, scooping up her staff on the way, a negligent twist allowing him to pull it free from between the bars. He tosses it her way and she performs a deft catch and a flashy little flourish that earns her a disapproving frown, she was training to fight, not perform on a stage. She offers his frown a short roll of her eyes and deigns to stand like one of the soldiers in the training yard, all straight spined and shoulders thrust back, eyes forward and chin lifted. It might have been a half decent impression but the barely suppressed grin rather spoils the effect.

"You lost your concentration, allowed me to guide you to where i wanted you"

He is soft spoken but he doesn't have to shout to produce that momentary falter in her theatrics, the suppressed grin smothered while the corners of her mouth attempted to twitch downward. He waits the half second it takes for that curiously disappointed expression to switch to a determination he's starting to learn he can utilize when it came to training her. She was fast, cocky, and occasionally played the fool, and yet his disapproval did not sit well with her and only seemed to gather her focus to try harder.

"Take a moment, we shall try again"

She obliges and sinks down on the floor right where she is, laying the staff across her folded legs, inspecting the dungeon with partial interest, as if she had never once been chained down here. He did wonder if she might baulk at the idea of being in Haven's dungeon once again, but she had agreed that her lessons were best done someplace where the occasional burst of erratic magic wouldn't make every templar in a mile radius, reach for their swords.

He sits across from her now, easing himself to the floor and drawing her attention sharply back to him. He seems to hold her attention quite a bit in fact. At first he imagines it simply to be her subconscious clinging to the only real familiar shape amongst all the armoured men and women that roam the camp, but a mere few weeks has been enough to put her at ease with most if not all of them. They in turn had responded to her barbed humour and bright interest in practically everything, far better than he might have expected and he imagined it had something to do with the almost supernatural ease with which she made friends.

He had discovered her almost feral hunger for knowledge of any kind, and once she found out his wealth of knowledge on the fade he found himself constantly ambushed by questions that she seemed to pick from thin air, whether they were training or simply traipsing through the Hinterlands. That she had only scratched the bare surface of what he professed to know, might account for her focus upon him, but that didn't account for her perpetual need to eagerly duel him with her mind as with her staff, finding added entertainment by constantly trying to crack his rather dry facade.

She blinks slowly at him now, waiting patiently as always, the slow curve of her grin approaching in her eyes before it can touch her mouth. She'd sit in silence wearing that very same expression the entire time if he said nothing, he'd once tried it and found himself engaged in a ridiculous staring contest across the campfire until Varric had sat down beside her, intent on teaching her the basics of wicked grace.

Had he known then what he knew now, he might have told the dwarf that this would be a mistake he'd learn to regret.

He'd discovered it on the first day he had brought her down here to train. Each move he showed her, she followed exactly as he had performed it, and he only ever had to show her once. It did not help her with her stamina or sense of balance so the moves were never perfectly executed without practice and that would take time, but he had gotten her through the fundamentals at a far quicker pace than he had anticipated. It was the same with the books that she borrowed from him, when they found time to discuss them, she could recited random passages by heart, and she missed nothing in a conversation, able to to recite from various points of view if asked. An eidetic memory wasn't the rarest of things to stumble upon, but it was rare enough for him to be intrigued, and to occasionally test its functions, much like a new toy, though he would never admit that even to himself.

"How many soldiers were there in the yard with the Commander this morning"

She all but beams now and slowly her eyes close, this isn't necessary but if he's going to let her show off, she will of course add her own theatrical touch to it.

"Eighteen. Twelve sword and shield bearers, four pikemen and a pair two handed swordsmen"

"Ataash karin kata"

"In the end lies glory"

"The group of stars known as draconis has how m-"

"Fifteen, really Solas i would have imagined a more challenging one"

"Very well, Why do you consider yourself a pariah amongst your people?"

She actually opens her mouth as if a reply has been lying in wait all this time, precisely why he has waited to spring the question upon her since she has yet to offer much of an explanation about her life before the Conclave. Her mouth closes soon after however and she opens one eye to give him a none too convincing glare and a slow shake of her head. He suppresses the urge to smirk but only barely, she's giving him that shrewd look again, it's unnervingly effective with just the one eye and all the more so when she opens the other and steeples her hands beneath her chin. That smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth again, the barest fraction of movement and he knows she's seen it when her eyes take on that particular shine of victory.

"I had too many questions, and occasionally i made people uncomfortable by not accepting the answers"

He'd been preparing himself for one of those strange staring contests again, she'd looked all but ready to start in an effort to deflect his question, and when she speaks he almost doesn't connect her words to his question. It will take him an hour or more before he realises she has reciprocated that barest glimpse behind his mask in the form of displaying that he did indeed possess a sense of humor, albeit a very old and decrepit one. Of course her answer merely draws him in and poses a dozen different questions, but now she's hauling herself to her feet again and rolling her shoulders in preparation to resume training.

"Are you sure you do not require a little more time, you were caught more than once"

"Solas, i grew up with four brothers, I learned how to take a few knocks very early on, it was either that or get left behind in the camp while the 'big boys' explored. Besides…."

She makes a show of looking around to make sure that the dungeon is empty, even though they would hear the echo of any footfall that might have approached, before going so far to whisper at him from behind her hand.

"...you hit like an Orlesian housewife"

He takes a long hard look at her, gently smiling as she arranges herself in a ready stance, the challenge understood and accepted with grace as he stands and takes the time to dust himself off. She is an engaging student even if she is still a little cocky, and she will no doubt force him to chip away at her past piece by piece, though he of all people could understand withholding all that they were. Yet there seems to be a worth to finding out what he can about her, she seems more vibrant than the rest here, and as a man thrust into a world that was now cold and distant to him, there is no shame in seeking shelter next to her dim light.

Facing her in a similar pose to her own, he bounces the end of his staff off the floor and allows just enough of a smirk for her to realise she's in trouble.

"Again!"

How did someone own a person?

This question had begun to follow him like a stray dog in the years before his rebellion began. What had started as an idle thought, soon became an obsession fed by the cruelty of his own people and ultimately culminated in the creation of the veil. Just one question was all it had taken to change the world of his people, and now he was asking the same question again as that voice in his own subconscious continued to repeat itself. It was almost as if a scrap of his dream had gotten caught up on something while the rest had drifted away, and now fluttered in his mind as he watched her slip from an open field into the line of trees awaiting her.

He could reach out and take her at any point, all it required was for him to step through, to answer the call of his hidden nature and take what was his. Even if this wasn't an utterly barbaric and undeniably archaic truth, what good would it do him in the long run for her to see him at his absolute worst? The blooming possessive desire that had taken root once he had stopped hiding, was strong and liable to grow stronger, but it was so far no match for the hundred different reasons he'd placed around him like wards, all of them providing strong arguments for why he couldn't and shouldn't.

Most of those arguments seem momentarily weak when he see's her draw the hart to a stop and slump forward against his neck in an unmistakable sign of defeat.

It should not be this way, she should have been turning the hart and racing the coming evening towards parts long unexplored, spending her days crawling over ancient walls and cataloging old secrets in that wonderfully expansive mind of hers. He should not have been half slumped in his chair reminding himself what exactly it would cost just to simply reach out and lay a cool hand on the back of that bowed neck.

But the world was what they made it, and he had moulded it into a very complicated place in regards to Talitha Lavellan.

His deepening thoughts were pierced by the low and mournful sound that slipped through the trees to reach him on the other side of the eluvian. The sound was pleasant under most circumstances, but now it touched upon a very old and deeply buried memory, peppering his thoughts with fleeting, flashing images; dark skin writhing beneath white paint, a muzzle wrinkled back from fatal teeth and a rush of heat to his cock. Quick, powerful and visceral enough to make him flinch, the memory swept through him like an assault, leaving him shuddering and half hard, staring at the mirror without really seeing it for a few seconds. He had not thought upon such things for a very long time, and those thoughts had been buried for a reason, having them dug up unexpectedly had not been pleasant despite the lingering heat beneath his skin.

When he could focus again, she was scrambling down from Salshira's back, delight accentuating her previously defeated form and he is reminded that there is love waiting here for her as well as defeat.

She was running almost before her feet could hit the ground, the source of that sound her clear goal, and now that the insidious memory had returned to its rest, it was once again pleasant to his ears, conjuring the scent of woodsmoke and the ghost taste of strong wine around a hunter's fire, both these things attributed to far more pleasant memories.

She ran with complete assurance of her spacial awareness, she ran with no fear for the constant threat of jutting branches and snaring roots, her body knowing where to be, when to turn sharply or leap a rapidly approaching obstacle. The loss of her arm had not diminished this skill, she'd merely compensated for it, taught her body to adapt for balance, and watching her run now made his heart ache sharply for the memory of silver sands and the clear sound of her breathless laughter.

She was not laughing now, but her smile is genuine and it brushes aside some of the torpor from her face, her eyes clearing from their previous dull glaze. She might well have spent most of her young life fighting the pull of her clan or perhaps just not being able to fit in, but she had told him enough to know there were those that would soothe the sting of her return with their presence, though even he knew this would only be temporary.

He brushed the last thought aside irritably, selfishly.

He deserved to dwell upon the fact that he knew her returning home would mean a return to a life under suspicious scrutiny. They would welcome her at first, welcome the hero, welcome their sister, they would see her returned in triumph amidst a new community she had helped build and she might well feel the warmth of home once again, but it would not last. Soon they would wonder, whisper and eyes would follow her with the dangerous tilt of distrust. Her opinions on their gods and the stories that surrounded them had always been demanding of a truth that frightened her people, he could only guess upon the friction that would occur while she held such the dangerous knowledge hed given her.

He deserved to think upon these things and worse, such as what might happen to her if they ever found out how deeply her connection to the reviled Fen'Harel went. But he was a selfish old wolf in many ways, and the length of his life had always made it easy to push a thought aside for later, because later would always come.

She burst through a stretch of gnarled pines and skidded to a halt, eyes slightly wide and focused upon a man half sprawled upon the fallen trunk of what must have been a behemoth of a tree when it was alive. Her arrival hardly goes unnoticed, the darked haired man tossing aside the pipes he'd been playing, an agile twist of his body dropping him from the trunk. Solas needed only one look at his eyes to see the resemblance and he couldn't say why he felt mildly unnerved to see those eyes staring out of someone else's face. They stared at each other in perfect stillness for a few moments, only their eyes gave any hint of movement, as if each were checking each others emotional weather. Then her brother broke into a long stride and within a few steps he was gathering her up in a rib cracking embrace, one she returned as best she could. For a moment he thought that her brother might not let her go, the relief she could not see with her face buried in his shoulder, was palpable and almost possessive.

This had to be the eldest brother.

They had been close, she said, only two years apart and the only two of five children to bear their father's gift of magic. This had forged an even tighter bond between them than the usual family ties. He had been her guardian against the hushed whispers and sidelong looks and she had taught him how not to be so serious all the time, she'd done her best not to look at him when she told him that, trying to hide a smirk because they both knew she was visiting those same lessons upon him.

"Faron, i can't breath!"

The words were muffled and joined by a low laugh as her feet were set back upon the ground. Faron took a step back, but only so he could get a better look at his sister, and it was clear when the relief and joy of her return faded by inches from his face, that he was dismayed by what he saw. Those dark blue eyes settled first upon her arm, or more specifically the long and too-flat sleeve that hid its diminished state. One twitch of that sleeve by his hand was enough for him to hiss a curse between his teeth and grip her shoulder hard. She placed a hand over his and Solas felt a lurch in his chest when her eyes gathered that same pleading look she had given him before he'd turned away.

"Faron it's...it's okay, it's not as bad as it looks"

"Tal, your arm is missing and your face is bare, I'm failing to come to terms with your definition of bad right now!"

The voice is tightly controlled but there is the unmistakable heat of outrage underneath the words. His other hand now traced her brow, as if confirming by touch, what he could already see with his eyes. Her jaw tightened and Solas felt his fingers curl around the arms of his chair in sympathy because he knew she was doing her best not to let that cup she's been holding for the last month, spill over. Faron seemed to recognise it too, for his hands fell away and he nodded, his face smoothing out after some effort.

"It is every elder brothers right to want to maim the bastard who disfigured his little sister, but perhaps the explanation can wait, though I daresay others won't be so tactful, you might want to start practicing your deflection, this won't be like the time you got caught with Asrath's hand up your...ow!"

Her hand had clipped him on the back of his head and Falon grinned hugely, scrubbing at short, dark hair as he backed up a step to miss the next swing.

"Such violence from the hallowed Lady Inquisitor! Glad to see your other arm works fine"

"Yes, and it's my good one. Mention the incident with Asrath again and they'll have to dig you up to pass on the keeper's mantle"

It is strange to hear her laughter come from anothers mouth, the voice is decidedly male and yet it carries the same inflections and Solas understands how little he really knew of the woman who'd almost destroyed his will. He knew enough to love her at an almost obsessive level, but it is another thing entirely to see her apart from him and the Inquisition, filling in the missing pieces of her life that could never really be described in words.

He watched her berate and swipe at her brother, another man who would dearly love to do him great harm, and tried to feel at peace with the knowledge that she might at least find some solace in her family, but it was hard to do so when everything he knew about her was telling him that she was not at peace with it. How long would she last among them, knowing what she knew, and when would the questions become too much? Would she confide what she knew to any of her people?

"Okay, before I subject you to the grand reunion that awaits you, I have to know, three legs or four?"

Solas found himself puzzled by this statement and leaned forward in his chair, watching her face as it twisted into a grin that he had sorely missed. She'd always looked at him like that when she decided to test his previously limited calm, and now her brother was matching her almost exactly.

"I should have known you wouldn't have wanted to wait. You realise the last time we did this, you got into trouble for trampling half the camp"

"If i recall correctly, that was due to you leading us through someone's apiary, you almost took an arrow that day"

Both grins grew, as if being stung and almost being shot were the heights of entertainment, and now she was rocking on the balls of her feet again, that all too telling sign that she was soon to become a blur. Before she could set off however, Faron became enveloped in green light, its luminescence hiding his form for a moment before dissipating to leave a new shape behind. The hart that now stood in his place, snorted and tossed its head, its chestnut flanks rippling with a bunching of the muscles before it took off.

"Oh you dirty, cheating…"

She doesn't finish her muttered curse before the same light covered her form as she jogged in the direction her brother had left, and now Solas stood as a wave of nostalgia took him, grasping the frame with both hands as her transformation completed itself. Her form was not predatory or even particularly impressive, and yet as he watched her rise on powerful hind legs with sleek ears twitching, he knew she would beat her brother home.

Four legs, not three. In this form at least, she was whole. In this form, he knew she was fast.

The hare leapt once, presumably for the joy of it, and then shot through the trees to give chase.

He feels the call almost before he is even asleep, and it is easy to gently guide his mind towards that presence,its resonance a familiar one, though he has not felt it in over two years. As his conscious rushes towards the path that has been left open for him, he cannot help but think of how fast Talitha would be were she able to run through the fade as easily as she did over land.

Eventually the fade finds its form, conjured by the mind of the young man now sitting upon a large, flat rock that was once presumably an altar given the stains that had long since become part of the stone. The cave is dry and lit by only a single candle, sending abstract shadows to cavort over the misshapen walls and he is slightly disturbed, but not surprised, to see a fleeting wolf shadow chasing an equally fleeting hare. This is a place where thought could find form, and Cole has had much time to learn to craft what he see's. The spirit does not acknowledge him until he is close enough to reach out and touch, and even then his eyes seem to carry an uncountable distance for a few more seconds before they visibly focused on the mage.

"Hello Solas, you came alone...I'm glad"

"You expected me to bring company?"

He watches the spirit rock slightly on his solid perch, eyes gathering that distant look again, his face screwing up into an expression of distaste, like a man who has discovered half a worm after biting into an apple.

"It pulls at its chains, it doesn't understand. Snapping, snarling, clawing at the walls, let...me...out"

He shivers and it reaches all the way down to his toes, playing down his spine like a plucked string and he has to remind himself that Cole simply couldn't help what he saw, it was his nature to pry, to seek the tears and snags that needed unravelling, Solas does not envy him such a journey.

"Leave it be Cole, there is nothing you can do for him"

"I didn't come here for him, I can't help it if he's shouting. You needed to see, to understand...she is fading"

Comprehension doesn't come immediately though he is well aware of whom Cole speaks, there is only ever one 'she' between them.

"She is in the arms of her family now Cole, she can find some peace there"

Even he can't quite believe his own words when they leave his mouth, the lie was a pointless thing and Cole's expression seems to agree, the spirit has seen the caverns of her heart and knows better than he what she will eventually find amongst her clan. There is no admonishment however, just a hand on the back of his own, pressing his palm into the chilled stone.

"I helped for awhile, but it was so heavy and she made me give it back"

"What do you mean, what did she take back?"

There is no reply, only a sensation of plunging movement, as though the ground has fallen out from beneath his feet and his eyes hadn't quite caught up. Nothing seems to have changed aside from Cole slipping off the altar to stand beside him, and when he opens his mouth to ask what has just happened, the spirit merely presses a finger to his own lips and points to a fissure in the cave wall. It was once presumably the caves mouth, but somewhere along the line, a cave in has all but blocked the passage. He still doesn't quite understand, but Cole rarely did anything without a meaning to it, sometimes you simply had to be patient in order to see it.

Less than a minute later he can hear a soft scrabbling coming from the fissure, and something small and brown slips through, pausing to rise up on its hind legs and inspect the cave before a familiar green light lengthened its body and a moment later she was pacing the cave on two legs instead of four. He feels all the moisture leave his mouth, and a swallow produces a dry click at the back of his throat. She was so close, and even as a memory her pull is tangible, the urge to reach out and touch curbed only by the fact that he knows better than to meddle here.

"Cole?"

Her whisper is hushed despite the apparent emptiness of the cave, and she jumps when the spirit makes its appearance, posed in much the same way as Solas had found him, though this version is showing more than a little strain, a fact she does not seem to miss, her hand reaching out to perhaps lay its reassuring pressure upon him, though she hesitates at the last second.

"You shouldn't have done it Cole, it was never yours to carry"

"Cold, he was so cold, shards of ice piercing all the way, bone deep. My knees are bowed, can't get up, there are no gods here to help me stand, he took away their masks, but he keeps his on….."

"I know little brother, but...you have to give it back now, you can't carry it forever, you promised"

"You aren't ready, it's still too heavy"

A jagged laugh splits the air and slips into his ears like a sharpened stilleto, it is the sound of her hysteria and it frightens her almost as much as it disturbs him, her hand clapping over her mouth to silence any further outbursts that might occur before she speaks again, her tone now placating, as though she were talking Cole from some ledge.

"I will never be ready for it Cole, but you must return it none the less, there are some things you just can't run from"

"But you can run fast!"

"Not fast enough for this little brother, come. It's time"

She climbs atop the altar and kneels upon the cold stone, seemingly preparing herself for whatever is to be returned. He wants to ask what it is, but the Cole beside him has vanished while his thoughts are so focused upon her. The cole upon the rough altar almost looks mutinous for a moment before he nods and places a hand over where her heart lies, and suddenly Solas understands. Suddenly he wants to be anywhere else but here, and yet his feet will not move as he feels the subtle pull of something passing between them.

She is still to begin with, almost seeming to be at peace until her chest begins to rise and fall rapidly and fingers begin to dig into the flesh of her thigh while lips press together in a thin and bloodless line. That pull becomes less subtle now, the thin flow becoming a stream that seems to make her limbs shake, and when the stream becomes a torrent she makes a sound like a wounded animal. Low and full of pain, the sound is a hundred times worse than that laugh because there is no way to stop or soothe what has already happened. Yet the clarity of this memory is so strong that it takes will not to step towards her.

Agony paints ugly lines across her face and now she bends over the arm that cradles her belly, her breath heaving in choked gasps as the last of what passes between her and the spirit returns to its rightful place. The tears are thick and fast but silent, and when her head bows with a thin, hurt sound, he watches them fall to be swallowed by the rock beneath her knees.

"I felt it from so far away, it was too much, too heavy"

Somehow he is not surprised to see her version of Cole turning to speak to him, though he understands without having to confirm, that she cannot hear the spirit speak now.

"I took the hurt without permission, she didn't understand, and then she did...because she could stand and smile and they wouldn't know, wouldn't see"

"See what?"

His voice is hoarse and he cannot take his eyes from her, only now he isn't admiring her beauty or spirit, he is both captivated and mortified by her pain, tangible enough that he believes if he touched her now, her skin would burn him.

"Open your eyes"

Perhaps most wouldn't understand what the spirit means at this point, but he has spent countless centuries learning how to communicate with them, and he knew such statements never really meant the obvious. He forces himself to concentrate, to remember that this was the fade, that the rock she sat on and the rock that surrounded them were mere constructs of memory. The walls around them first become transparent, the malignant green of the true fade bleeding through until all that remains are the three of them and the stone upon which she still kneels, shivering like a fly bitten horse, her surroundings unseen.

He see's them now, they cluster around her like a small swam, desire and rage tightly packed together at her back. He watches with sick fascination as a desire demon bends its head and runs it dusky tongue along the length of her throat, it's crooning purr one of satisfaction, even as rage plunges invisible claws into her spine, the rest of them jostling and heaving with hunger, waiting their turn. She doesn't see them and she won't feel them until they let her, and he knows it will be some time before they allow that, for she is a lasting feast of desire, rage and pain now.

Once more that old refrain touches his lips, that this was not supposed to happen. But it had happened, it was happening and she was to suffer it alone. Now he understands her insistence to return home, just as he understands that she will not stay there, eventually they would drain her of the pains that now gripped her, and the strongest would attempt to worm its way in, and once she was alerted to its presence he had no doubt she would get as far away from her own people as she could. Sooner or later, once they had finally reduced her to a mindless husk, they would have the last of her. They would fight and rip at each other for the privilege of such a powerful figure in Thedas, and one would emerge victorious, to walk in her skin.

"Cole...please"

He doesn't like the shaken quality of his voice one bit, and a treacherous thought wonders how many more ways she possessed to make him feel weak. Compassion understands however and the scene dissipates like smoke, leaving their surroundings formless and white. It doesn't help, her pain is now an imprint on his mind, along with the knowledge of her probable fate, these were not so easily erased, and he realises he has been forced to carry some of that burden she held.

"I can't stay, there is more hurting, everywhere, and more to come. You must decide which one she is"

Cole presses something into each of his hands, and his fingers wrap around their strange shapes as the spirit leans in, close as a lover, to whisper at his ear.

"He thinks he knows the answer, but his reasons are red and wrong, don't let him out"

Cole is gone before he can reply, as if he has never been there at all, leaving him alone in this empty space. Slowly he opens his hands, though by now the strangeness of those small hard shapes are familiar to him. In the right lay a black pawn, the brave sacrifice, to be forgotten and discarded once it had done its duty. In the left hand lay it's king, integral, important, to be protected at all costs, the gender might have been wrong but the symbolism is no less poignant.

He lets the pieces fall , they fade before they reach the ground, and in his head he hears the muted clink of chain as something stirs and pours red whispers into his ears.


	4. Chapter 4

**So this chapter well and truly kicked my ass, which is why it has taken longer than average to complete. Believe it or not, i had written 12 pages before i sat back, read it, and decided it was just not up to standard. I did that a** ** _second_** **time, and it wasn't until the third attempt that i actually felt that the story was following the flow I have set so far.**

 **For those of you following along with this story, I will** ** _always_** **strive for maintaining the quality of each chapter over hitting a deadline, so if im taking a little longer than usual when getting a chapter out, don't panic, i haven't abandoned this pair, I just refuse to hand you a crappy chapter.**

 **This chapter is dedicated to Leonard Cohen, a man who wrote one of the world's most beautiful songs, and who sadly died on the 7th of November, May his words echo for centuries to come.**

 **~o0O0o~**

" _You must decide which one she is"_

But it wasn't that simple, it was _never_ that simple. Cole had meant well with his strange symbolism as well as revealing exactly how Lavellan had survived the last month without succumbing to the grief Solas had fled from. It had been distressing to witness and yet he had no doubt that the spirit had only sought to tap into those parts of him that cared enough to bear some responsibility for what he had wrought, enough to perhaps stir his hand into interfering. Cole remained a spirit of compassion, but sometimes compassion forced you to face uncomfortable truths and once more he found himself balancing on the knife edge of right and wrong, duty and love. It had been he who had tangled them both in lies and inadvisable longing, Cole had simply tugged a few of those threads just a little harder in an attempt to draw them closer, and it seemed that Solas had inadvertently handed him the tools to do so.

If Cole had perhaps asked him to do the impossible then perhaps he could have stepped off that knife edge and made an uneasy peace with his decision to carry on regardless, it would have hurt no less but his way would have been clear, if not his conscience. But Cole had known as well as he did, that he had it in his power to keep her safe from the unseen danger that now surrounded her. A single act of his power could keep her from the harm that was slowly draining her, he was strong enough now, and yet it still wasn't that simple. To do what Cole had asked, he would have to overcome two inescapable points.

He would have to be in her presence to do it, and the act itself would go against everything he had once fought for.

It was these two points that roused his more selfish nature into asking how many more times he would put his plans and his beliefs into question and peril for just one woman.

As he paced before the blank eluvian, that voice now asked how far he would have to go before he finally realised that she would always be there to stall his path, that the real danger was not the Inquisition, the Qunari or any other thorn that might choose to prick his side, but her, always her. It was a stark and uncompromising voice that made him feel hollow, because in order for him to truly listen he had to scoop out every instinctual feeling he possessed for her, and she had managed to fill his head and heart as much as he had filled hers.

That selfish voice attempted to steel his resolve by filling his head with the cold hard facts, though none was so cold as the thought that she, along with a large portion of Thedas' population, would not survive the ensuing onslaught once he tore down the veil. She was all but destined to die and he was here, pacing like a mindless love addled fool because she ran the risk of possession. Just what did he think would happen when the demons roamed this earth again? They would swarm to her and those like her, beings of power and fierce hearts, they would rape her of her soul and crawl inside, ride her body like a toy until they grew bored and discarded the empty shell. The image was vile, but it was an image with its own veil torn aside to allow the stark light of truth to sear it.

His course of action should have been perfectly obvious given the logic of this unadorned truth.

Yet he only had to let that selfish voice slip away for a second before all that he held at bay came flooding back, along with another truth that was equally inescapable. The demons sought out her rage and her desire, and these were both bestowed upon her by him. As cold as he could make his heart with logic and reason, that lingering frost seemed to quail and melt beside the all consuming emotions she called into being. His mind continued to regale him with the vivid memory of her body bowed in pain that could never be dispelled by magic or concoctions designed to sooth the body and mind. Her agony had ripped fissures in the flesh of his obsession and crawled inside him, nesting amongst the beautiful memories of her, corrupting them with the tragedy of her possible fate and infecting his narrowed mind with yet more guilt.

As if this were not enough, that insidious voice had also found its way to his ears once again, that chained presence that seemed to feed and grow in strength the more that he tortured himself over her. Though this time it was not satisfied with simply inserting its own credible truths into an otherwise ordered mind. Now it warred with that other voice, the cool mercenary voice of his cold logic, as he continued to pace before his own reflection, hand's rasping in agitated sweeps across the back of his head, his neck and his brow, as if he could scrub away the skin and reach inside to throttle the both of them into silence.

" _...She does not have to die and you know it"_

" _She will always unravel everything we build, let her go now and save yourself the pain later"_

" _...Do you really think your own heart and mind could survive such an end for her?"_

He gripped the edge of a sturdy crafting table with both hands, teeth gritted and mind seething with these thoughts.

" _Do you really think your plans can survive this insane version of love?"_

" _...Bring her to the fold, make her see it through your eyes"_

" _Never. She will never stand at your side and watch them burn"_

" _...You can compel her, you know you can, it would be but the work of your will and she would follow"_

He shook his head, eyes squeezing closed with a snarl pushed through his teeth. No, not that. He could never do that, not to her.

" _End her now and you will never have to doubt your course again"_

" _...End her now and you will never know how your name will sound when she whispers it in the dark"_

He unleashed another snarl as his own mind pushed at the boundaries of his self control, his magic coalescing in response to this fevered and building distress, rushing to his hands in defence against the intangible until he had to release it or let it join the fray in tearing him to pieces.

The crafting bench shot away from him and crashed heavily against a rack of herbs and decanted potions. Bottles chimed violently before falling, while bowls of crushed blood lotus and embrium scattered multicoloured dust in a small maelstrom before it began to settle and fall. He stood within that emptied space, body heaving with deep, slow breaths as he called the remainder of his wild magic back to heel. The anxiety born spike of adrenaline was now seeping from his body, leaving him feeling as exhausted as a man who has been run ragged, and once more he found himself stumbling backwards to fall into that chair, his own unflattering reflection greeting his descent.

Yesterday he had sat before the eluvian with an almost dignified patience, now he was once again simply succumbing to need, a need for distraction, a need to silence the warring halves of his mind, or perhaps simply the need to soothe the barren spaces of his own treacherous heart. There were many needs that the sight of her could quench, he could quite literally pick and choose at this moment, but all of them culminated in a small defeat against his dignity.

For once he found that he didn't much care.

 **~o0O0o~**

 _There is nothing that marks their victory at the crossroads more poignantly than the silence that follows dusk into night. For the last couple of days the star strewn dark has been punctuated with the distant sounds of templars and mages clashing, and he had found himself wondering why they had bothered with their farce of jailor and prisoner in the first place when this outcome seemed to be all but inevitable. The fighting might have only started a year or two ago, but the war has been quietly raging for far longer than that. Now, only the natural sounds of the night's true nocturnal hunters and their prey, touch upon that peaceful silence, and their sounds merely enhance that peace, as natural order began to replace the chaos that had been here._

" _Andraste's ass woman, how do you keep_ _ **doing**_ _that?"_

 _Of course not all are as appreciative of the silence, though he recognizes that his companions ability to finally relax enough to pursue their own entertainment, is telling enough of the short reprieve they have been given before they must push on to Redcliffe Village. Varric throws his cards down upon the rough board propped between them and eyes Talitha with feigned disgust that is bordering on reluctantly impressed, the Dalish woman doing her best not to look smug and failing badly._

" _I'm a good student"_

 _He can tell by the way that she is studiously keeping her eyes on Varric's suspicious glare, that she is doing her best not to look at the one person who could reveal the truth behind her newly found aptitude for the game of Wicked Grace, and finally the dwarf flips two gold dragons her way before he stands and declares himself ready for lest she decided to bankrupt him in one night. He watches her squirrel the coins away into one of many hidden pockets about her robes and knows that the coins will find their way into starving hands at some point. If Varric wasn't careful he would end up feeding half the disenfranchised of Ferelden._

 _He expects her to retreat to her own tent, the hour is late enough and they would have much to do the next day. Instead she drags her pack closer and after a moment of rummaging, pulls out a roll of stained canvas that is spread out on the floor by her feet as she then begins to pick through their gathered firewood, setting some aside while placing others in the middle of the canvas. He watches in silence at first, not quite understanding the purpose of this exercise until she gathers the corners of the canvas together and hauls it all over one shoulder as she stands, one foot slipping beneath her resting staff to flip it up into her waiting hand._

" _I would not have thought now was an appropriate time for exploration Talitha, the area is calmed but hardly safe"_

" _Well then, you had best accompany me, lest the dreaded squirrels decide to attack as a unit"_

 _She spares him no more words than this before she steps over the fallen log upon which he sits and slips into the dark. His sigh is a long suffering one as he prepares to do just as she has suggested, if only so that they wouldn't find her bear torn corpse in the morning, no doubt the heavily sleeping Seeker would find a way to place that blame at his feet. Her impulsive nature is frustrating to say the least, though he can privately admit just a touch of curiosity as to what she was up to now._

 _She appears to be in no hurry for it doesn't take long for him to catch up with her casual stride, even in the depths of night she walked the land as if she were a part of it, and any snap of twigs or rustle of leaves that guide him to her were surely purposeful. For once his disapproving expression does not elicit anything but that calm smile she always seems to wear when things were going her way, and he has to remind himself that turning back now would be childish. He does not fall into the trap of asking her where they were going, he would find out soon enough. She might be a frivolous creature at times but everything she did had some purpose., and it would be revealed when she was ready._

 _They walk together in silence, unfettered by the usual chatter between people who tended to find such noiseless companionship to be awkward. It was a comfortable silence that wrapped around them and almost made it possible to imagine they were the only two beings to share this night, soothing his disapproval and allowing his curiosity to grow in its absence. It appears that she is gifted in more ways than one, and he finds himself wondering exactly how cunning she might have been were she born into his time._

 _When she finally draws to a stop, it is the crumbling tower of Calenhad's Foothold that looms over them, the almost foreboding shape of the ruin resembling some great lumbering beast at rest without the daylight to illuminate it's sad and sorry state. Her memory does not allow for cautious steps however and she moves towards and into the derelict boundaries of the towers walls with no fear, her sense of direction guided by the gift that allowed her to know where to place her feet. Still he chooses not to break the silence with foolish questions when her actions will explain all in time. Instead he follows her to the only tower that still boasted a roof, the Inquisitions standard still where it had been planted between the large cracks in the stone floor._

 _He offers no assistance as she sets the bundle of sticks down and begins the makings of a fire just outside the mouth of the still standing tower, nor does she ask for it, seemingly taking his silence for consent. He finds no reason to instruct her once the fire is lit and she began to set the wards he had patiently taught her, though he does indulge in the pride of any teacher whose student has caught on as quickly as she has. Only when the fire is ablaze and the wards are set to her satisfaction, does she turn to him with a smile that is no less vibrant for its gentled state, one hand making a sweeping gesture towards the tower, as if her intention should be obvious._

" _Well, now you don't have to wonder"_

 _He tilts his head in a curious gesture, an idea forming in his mind already, though he doesn't quite dare hazard a guess with this woman, she was becoming far too adept at surprising him still, and he isn't quite ready to be proven wrong in her eyes._

" _Wonder what exactly?"_

 _She rolls her eyes with no real impatience as she lowers herself before the fire as calmly as a lady seating herself within her own parlour, already unravelling the wrappings about her feet and legs._

" _When we first came upon this tower you wondered what dreams it might hold. I'm not sure when, if ever, we shall come to this place again, so now is your chance. You can rest easy, I will keep watch and the wards will alert us of anyone approaching. Go. Sleep. Dream."_

 _He finds a tentative and curious smile pulling at his mouth and knows she is quick enough to see it there, its appearance broadening her own grin as she neatly rolled up the wrapping and began work upon its twin. He should be surprised, and in a way he is, but this gesture is like the countless others she has made towards her companions over the past few weeks. She seems to find an unlimited joy in giving them the things that drew them out of themselves. For Cassandra it has been the simple act of trust given to a woman who had once been her jailor, for Varric it was a genuine thirst for the tales that lived in him, the true ones and the those that were highly embellished._

 _For him, there was this. A thoughtful gift that was no less generous for its simplicity._

 _He doesn't bother telling her that this would likely prove to be a bad idea right around the time Cassandra awoke to find them both missing from the camp, if he is reading her as well as he's beginning to think he is, she will already have a dozen answers for any argument he might produce. This is a kindness he is not expecting and for once he isn't sure which words would correctly offer the gratitude it deserves. She appears to notice this too and forestalls any awkward words with a negligent shooing gesture of one hand before she produced a small sharp knife and a lump of wood he'd seen her secret away into her robes while they had been gathering firewood for the camp._

 _He wastes no time in wondering why she has bothered to do this, for her the answer would no doubt be obvious, and the lure of the tower and the dreams it held finally compels him to move into it's enclosed space. He supposes that asking him to bring along his bed roll would have ruined the surprise, but he has slept upon far more treacherous surfaces than the cracked stones of the Foothold and it is easy to settle his frame comfortably enough with his head resting on his pack._

 _It has always been easy for him to sink into the dark and warm waters of sleep, but for a few moments his eyes remain open, fixed upon her illuminated figure as she thoughtfully turned the piece of wood in her hands, likely trying to decide which shape lived within it before she would turn the small blade to carefully tease it free. His opinion of her kind has been so cemented that he'd guarded himself against all the possible clashes of personalities that might arise given the likelihood of her beliefs. Now he is coming to understand that there really wasn't much that one could do to prepare themselves for a woman quite like her._

 _When his eyes finally close, it is not the possibilities of what he might discover in his dreams that follow him into that comforting dark, but rather the look on her face that was all but garunteed when she eagerly awaited to hear all that he had seen._

 **~o0O0o~**

Her eyes were closed when the eluvian's rippling surface cleared enough to grant him her face once more, and a nervous tension seemed to have taken hold of her body, though she seemed to be surrounded by nothing more but the calm green and golden quiet of the woodlands that surrounded the aravel upon which she sat. The tiredness and the weight of withheld secrets still made their mark upon her face, she still looked far more haggard than she had any right to in this peaceful place and already he had to wonder how much of this was due to those secrets she held fast, and how much was the fault of those that surrounded her in invisible malevolence. Part of him ached fiercely to see her this way, while the rest of him pointed out that he should surely have expected this in the wake of all he had revealed to her.

When strong, slightly gnarled fingers settled upon her shoulder from behind she jumped ever so slightly, and those fingers tightened briefly in comfort before the owner of that hand stepped out of the aravels dim light to seat himself on the steps beside her. Solas needn't guess as to the identity of this person, like her older brother, the similarities are striking enough to prove that this man could be nobody else but her father.

The lined face that regarded her still-closed eyes might have fooled him, the slightly sagging cheeks and jowls giving the man the almost mournful look of a bloodhound, but the dark blue of those eyes that hold a gentle excitement as he pulled a long wooden box from his own hands to place carefully in her own, are far too familiar for him to be mistaken. This was the man to whom she would compare all others of course, they shared a bond in both their magic and thier personal philosophy when it came to other people and how to deal with them. He has heard many stories that talk of their closeness, and he knew even back then that they likely didn't do half the justice that this particular bond deserved.

Deshan Lavellan looked upon his daughter with a mixture of apprehensive excitement marred by an undeniable sadness that likely derived from the sight of her diminished physical state and spirit. If he knew her half as well as he believed, Solas would guess that she had hidden the true nature of her mental state from all but the most shrewd of onlookers, yet here and now she was as naked beneath her father's gaze as she had been when she stood before him in that sheltered cave, just moments after he had shattered her kind heart.

Slowly her eyes opened and she regarded the long wooden box with a mute question that she eventually passed to her father's waiting gaze.

"It isn't going to bite you child. Go on, open it"

The angle of his view didn't permit him to see the box's contents when she first slid the top free, and he was still none the wiser while she simply stared into the box, words faltering on her parted lips as she reached inside to touch whatever lay within. Deshan seemed not to take offence in the midst of her silence, as if perhaps he expected such in the wake of his gesture.

"You have a young lady named Dagna to thank for the idea, we exchanged a few letters after she had your spymistress contact me, and she sent me the schematics for the harness"

Solas couldn't help it, he found himself swallowing hard when she finally pulled the object free, revealing it to the patched, late afternoon sun that filtered through the gently rustling canopy above them. If not for the dark hue of the ironwood from which it was carved, the arm would have been an exact replica of the real thing, right down to the delicate tapered fingers that had been wrought into a pose familiar to any who had seen her channel magic through her hands. Most children would often embellish their parents aptitude with certain gifts, mostly out of love, and yet Solas had never doubted her honesty when she spoke of her father's prowess when it came to turning simple wood into things of beauty, and the confirmation was right there before him, held in one shaking hand as she turned her speechless expression to that lined face again.

When Deshan took the arm from her unresisting hand, Solas could see that threads of silver had been fashioned into the ironwood, the delicate strands forming a vine leaf pattern that gathered at the inner wrist to form one word, or more accurately, an old name.

Fisara.

He had come to know of the Dalish tradition of a 'true' name, it was a name given once the child had grown enough to have earned it. He had never pressed her for it, and unusually it was a piece of information she had kept to herself, so it was somehow hard not to feel slightly uncomfortable in discovering it this way. But his discomfort was second to the sudden longing that welled up rudely and without warning at the sight of that one word, because it described her perfectly and allowed him to understand that there was at least one more person who knew all that she was, better than he did.

Fisara, a singular word with a meaning that could be pulled in many different directions, though its meaning when placed next to her was simple enough; Hungry for the poetry of the journey.

"She said that enough of the elbow joint had been left, that you should be able to freely bend the limb once you have grown accustomed to the weight. The ironwood is strong enough that it won't split when it channels your lightning"

He separated the various straps and held up the arm as if offering it to her, and eventually Talitha nodded, those weary features turning to a quiet fascination as her father began to fit the arm into place. Straps about the upper arm held the ironwood firmly to its fixture below the missing portion, while the longer straps that crossed over her torso and back would no doubt take its weight better. It fit seamlessly of course, Solas had known as much when he had seen it, the replication perfect in a way that could only be reproduced by one who knew her well.

Still she couldn't seem to find words, or perhaps the words are there but the will to speak them is not, as if she feared that opening her mouth might cause all the secrets to spill out onto her lap. Deshan does not seem disappointed in her lack of verbal gratitude, it's all there in a single grateful tear that rolls over the sharp angle of her cheekbone as he gathered her into his arms, pulling her onto his lap as easily as if she were still but a child. Perhaps for just a moment, she is exactly that, her body curling into his embrace as if it offered an escape she could find nowhere else. Only now, when she cannot see it with her face buried in the rough spun wool that covered his chest, does the old man's expression turn grim, almost hateful.

He could have drawn all the unspoken things from her with that powerful silence she had learned from him, but it is easy to see the hurt that lives in her, and pulling those secrets out by force would be akin to drawing a knife through her flesh. In that moment, Solas knew that here was a man who would gladly have pushed his way to the front of the line of people who would wish to do the ancient elf harm. That look saddened Solas in a way that Cullen's cutting remarks had not, it was a deeper sadness because in another world he would have respected a man like Deshan despite his beliefs, for it was clear who had the upper hand in raising a daughter like Talitha.

A throat clears somewhere beyond the range of the eluvian's sight, and that sharp expression in the old man's eyes flicks off to the distance, not softening in the least as Talitha unfolded herself from his lap and swiped the heel of her palm beneath one eye. The tone of that forced cough held no care for the tenuous nature of the scene its owner had walked in on, and when the man stepped into view, one look at his face was enough to note the barely contained disapproval aimed at the younger Lavellan. Of course Solas knew that there would be some who would not welcome her return as much as the rest, there were those who had not been secretive about their distrust of a Dalish who would affix questions to their long held beliefs, what she had told him of these people only exacerbated his impatience with those that followed the lies that had been artfully woven into the truth.

"Deshan, we are about to gather for the offerings, will your daughter be joining us?"

The tone suggested a preference that she should not join them, and part of him was glad to see the way her eyes narrowed at the interloper, though he felt a touch of wariness too, would she allow spite to get the better of silence now?

"I can speak for myself Aedlen, as you well know"

Broad shoulders stiffened and the tall man's lips pressed together as he turned to her, eyes flickering over the newly affixed arm with undisguised distaste, though a far more wary glance was passed over the elder Lavellan who merely stared in silence, his face now blank, which Solas would have found more disturbing than the sharp look he'd worn just moments before.

"Aye, I have no doubt that you can, though decency should compel your tongue to tread carefully Talitha, your recent excursions with the 'faithful' have failed to charm everyone. You bring fear with you, and some of us would not see that fear spread along with your chantry's lies"

"Enough Aedlen, you go too far"

The words are soft as a blade drawn from velvet, Deshan did not apparently need to shout in order to silence his clan mate, though it is clear that more of the man's diatribe waited behind a barely held tongue. Talitha stood now, limbs shaking once more, though he is sure that it's anger that compelled the tremble in place of the weary sorrow that gripped her beneath her father's gaze. He almost expected Deshan to stop her, but the old man merely watches in further silence as she took a step towards the broader elf.

"Decency might well compel me to guard my tongue Aedlen, but it does not require me to stand here in the presence of your ill informed petulance"

The words are as softly spoken as her fathers, but they are also as swift and hard as the hand that had once struck his face, and when she walks away from the pair of them, her gait is stiff, as if the anger had found a way to impede her very muscles and joints. There are more words exchanged heatedly between the two men, but they are faint and difficult to make out the further away she draws from them.

Without really thinking about it, his hand reached out and pressed against the cool silvered surface of the mirror, it was as much comfort as he could offer and she would never feel it. Part of him is almost amused at the gesture, she had faced far worse than the bigotry of her own people, so why he felt compelled to offer this unseen comfort now was a mystery to those pragmatic parts of him that still insisted she was naught more than a dangerous distraction.

Yet it was more than just difficult to see her like this, it dug into that very core of him, past the ice laden armour he has tried time and again to place around his heart where she is concerned. It is just as hard to find out how powerless he is against these feelings while he watches the swift stride of her feet turn to a blind run on the heels of an anguished sound that pulled its way from her throat. The well of emotion and the untested balance of the new arm has made her previously swift movements a little clumsy, yet she ignored the way that the low hanging branches whipped at her face as she pushed her way deeper into the forest, running from unkind words and the urge to spill all that she knew.

A colder part of him understands that she now feels just a fraction of what he felt when faced with the Dalish and their pride in following the 'old ways', those lies that they told themselves because it was better than having no past at all.

He could hear the rising heave of her breath now, the audible rasp of anger and emotion with nowhere else to go, made all the harder to carry by the demons that fuelled it all just that little bit further. He might have told himself that he was merely imagining this last thought, if not for the way that lightning now crawled in wild arcs over her tightly clenched knuckles and forearm, the strain of keeping her wild magic in check causing veins to stand out in stark blue lines like tattoos.

He watched her push herself even harder, as if she hoped to outrun more than simply what she had left behind back at the aravel, and something told him that if the edge of the world had come into her view right then, she would have continued to run right out into nothingness.

She burst through the heavily hanging strands of a hulking willow and something inside him twists sharply when she finally stumbles and falls heavily to both knees, the faltering of her feet just as sure a sign of her heavy distress as her hitching breath and the lightning that now crawled up over her shoulder and played along the straps across her chest. Lank hair fell into her screwed up features as she bowed her head, trembling where she had fallen, the small pond before her sheltered by more willow's that swayed gently in the early evening breeze, their gentle movement almost mocking the maelstrom of emotion and magic that now moved around her.

She should not have been alone at a time like this, and the few steps it would have taken for him to pass through the eluvian now, had never seemed so vital.

She threw herself to one side now, her body prone as she slammed a hand into the thick trunk of the nearest willow with a harsh cry that wasn't quite a scream and yet didn't quite manage to be a sob. Lightning sparked and crawled from this point of contact, climbing the tree in fitful bursts, and he could almost feel the mounting pressure in his own bones just moments before the tree's trunk split with a violent crack that echoed around the small pond, fire now racing over the smouldering bark like a hungry untamed beast.

" **You should have let me die you selfish bastard, you should have let that fucking mark take me you coward!"**

There is of course no way she could know that he was watching her, and yet her raw declaration is spoken as if he stood before her, he is not foolish enough to think that her words were meant for any other. Those words stunned him just as much as the hand that had once struck him in her anger, and they are no less painful for the sorrow that mingled in every fury bound syllable. That arrogant part of his soul is indignant at her accusation of cowardice, but he can't deny her this truth, she lived despite every reasonable argument that pointed out the danger she would always pose him. She lived because he could not bear to feel her complete absence in the years left to this world. To call his actions selfish was putting it mildly.

As she poured her unrestrained magic into the rapidly dying tree, her eyes became wide enough to almost bulge from their sockets, and Solas was quick enough to see the passing red gleam that swam through them, her body jerking as if in reaction from some invisible blow. A rush of bile climbed his throat and was swallowed down thickly as he came to understand that her 'followers' were far more greedy than he had imagined. One of them had chosen this desperate moment to leap forward and test the boundaries of her body, and he could see by the terror that marked her slackened features, that she had _felt_ it.

Panic gripped him and moved him from his chair so violently that it tipped back with a crash, both hands now gripping the sides of the mirror, though even he couldn't be sure if this was to steady himself or restrain himself from doing something foolish.

She snarled at the air and for a moment he imagined her lost to whatever curious power that had decided to try her on for size, but it is _her_ voice that rasps through the strain.

"I am neither foolish nor desperate enough to let you take me creature!"

He watched with a slow growing and unaccustomed fear as her magic finally began to dwindle, her face growing slacker still as eyes rolled to their whites, her body giving one final jerk before it finally became boneless and she collapsed, consciousness now leaving her defenceless, no matter how vehement her declaration.

At least one of the demons had decided to take her words as a challenge.

 **~o0O0o~**

" _Indomitable focus?"_

 _The two words are merely a repetition and yet she manages to place so many unsaid questions behind them that he begins to think he has made a mistake amist the casual turn this conversation has taken. Alarm bells are certainly ringing in his head and the temptation to cover his tracks by way of a long and purposefully confusing explanation, hovers in the periphery of his mind. Yet the strange tilt of her eyes and the curve of her mouth are pleasing to his eye if he were to admit such a truth to himself, and he feels an old heart quicken as the words leave his mouth with no planning or caution, the risk forcing sluggish blood to briefly race through his veins._

" _Presumably, I have yet to see it dominated. I imagine the sight would be...fascinating"_

 _It was almost as if he were challenging her, for has she not challenged his way of thinking in a dozen different ways so far? Perhaps he wishes to see where the line in their friendship is drawn, or if in fact there is a line at all. It was akin to poking a dangerous creature, and about as ill advised as handing his orb over to the venatori, but the ghost of his youth remained in the vaults of his mind and he knows without a doubt that if his younger self had ever happened upon a woman like this, he would have pursued her with a relentless determination._

 _The small laugh from the back of her throat is accompanied by a suddenly sly turn of her lips and he realises that he hasn't come anywhere close to finding the line just yet._

 _Oh please, be very careful._

 _He doesn't know if this silent warning is meant for him or for her, all he_ _ **does**_ _know is that the way she is looking at him now does something to his insides that makes them squirm almost pleasurably._

" _We shall speak later Solas"_

 _Her words are heavily laced with deeper meanings he could spend the whole day musing over, but for now he simply watches her back as she walks away, the sudden bright flash of blue eyes catching his as she threw one last glance over her shoulder, a strange heat travelling the distance between them. It touches the back of his neck like a warm hand and once again the warning to tread carefully echoes in his ears._

 **~o0O0o~**

" _Are you mad?! Have you actually lost every single ounce of sense you possess?!"_

His own subconscious now begged for him to see reason with every step he took, and if it could have gained any physical purchase in this world it would have snatched him by his collar and dragged him back. But nothing impeded the decisive tread that propelled him forward, and no internal voice had enough strength to overcome the sight of her laying there, utterly defenceless. Though at first glance it might look as though she were sleeping, the twitching and occasional violent shudder told him that she waged a war in the fade that she was not equipped to win. He had seen what had surrounded her, and he knew that her weakened heart could not muster the strength to compel them to leave her.

He had given the patience of demons far too much credit, and now she hung in a precarious balance. He ignored the usual logical questions that asked why he would bother risking so much for a woman who was fated to die by his actions anyway, that logic hardly mattered next to the here and now. No doubt he would have plenty of time to agonise over the stupidity of his actions when he was safely within his own sanctuary once more, the self recriminations a small price to pay, as all costs tended to be right up until the very moment you had to pay them.

The price still seemed so very small when he is but a step away from her prone form, and when he sank to his knees before her, there was almost a reverence to his gaze, because he never imagined that he would be this close to her again. When she had stood before him in the ruins of his old world, he had done everything he could not to lay hands upon her, too aware of what one simple touch could do to his will. Now the idea of _not_ touching her while her silent war raged in her dreams was unthinkable to him. The gentleness with which he brushed the stray strands of ashen hair from her face translated only a fraction of his his guilt, each tic that crossed her features a scald against his skin, every small noise of distress caught in the back of her throat a thorn that pressed deeply into his gut.

He had known his actions would have consequences beyond those that would be visited upon this world, but he couldn't have even begun to have imagined this, such a picture would have never fit into his mind whenever his thoughts had strayed to her in those dawning moments when he realised they would have to meet again in order for him to retrieve the anchor. It almost called into question how he would handle the destruction of a whole world if his heart could not manage the ruin of just one woman.

In his world, she would have been taught things that would have made demons fear _her_ , but such gifts had faded along with everything else he had ever known, and now he was once more faced with a despicable choice, one that she would be unlikely to forgive if she were ever to find out. A small part of his magic touched her now as he pulled her into the crook of one arm, the chill that permeated her skin almost frightening. His spell would lull her mind into a deeper sleep, an action that might be considered dangerous if not for his precarious plan, but he could not risk her waking now, not before he was finished and once more within the safety of his sanctuary.

What he was about to do spat in the face of everything he believed, even as he told himself that the purpose of this practice was _not_ the same violation he had once so atrongly rallied against, it was simply the only way he could help her without gracing her with the pain of his presence.

It was the truth, but it sickened him no less, and there was no pleasure to be had when he called the old and ancient magic to his free hand and touched fingers to her face. Memory allowed his tracing across her cheeks and brow to be accurate, the flowing lines coming together to form an old symbol he had once vowed never to use again. It was a symbol that the demons would remember, for even they had old fears that haunted them, memories of a time when such markings would ward them from touching the 'property' of an Evanuris.

This Vallaslin would never be recognized by any Dalish, despite the many versions adopted by foolish younglings who sought to shock or impress. Nor would any blood writing be drawn with as much care as this one was, each line a declaration to the creatures that presently tore at her and each other for purchase, a declaration as starkly simple as it was archaic.

Mine!

As the marking reached its completion, the dark red lines began to fade, as if her very skin drank them in. She would never see them if there was any kindness left for a man such as him, but they would burn brightly in the eyes of any demon that came near, though it cost a piece of his soul to do it to her of all people, no matter the logic behind it.

He knelt there in the dark, surrounded by the shadows of the old willow trees, the cool weight of her in his arms while he waited for her tormented struggles to lessen and finally cease, only satisfied that his gesture had worked when her breath fell into the natural rhythms of sleep and the warmth began to seep back into her flesh. Even then it was hard to relinquish his hold on her, as he told himself yet again that _this_ would be the last time he would permit himself to come so close, to risk so much.

He bowed his head enough to press lips to her smoothed brow, still not ready for the proximity of that lyrium and pine scent that tried to drag his mind into reverie, and he felt ashamed when that old refrain leaves his lips, feeling every inch the coward she had branded him not long before.

"I am so sorry my love"

"If you are who I think you are flat ear, i dare say you have _much_ to be sorry for"

He froze with his head still bowed, only his eyes tilting towards the sound of that voice which is soon accompanied by the silken song of a drawn blade as the woman stepped closer to them. His mind worked quickly even in the midst of his panic, piecing together the ashen hair...broad hunters shoulders and a voice that was would be _hers_ given a good few more years of age. He had watched her father's quiet and grim anger with dismay, now he faced the very real force of a mother's rage. It burned in her eyes and seemed to reflect upon the steel of the shortsword now tilted to point at his face.

"You are the one she will not speak of, but I know what a heart shattered looks like. Tell me, were you the one who took her arm too?"

He wasn't sure if he dared to speak, what could he possibly say to this woman that would make her understand? It was hardly a relief that she only thought him to be a city elf, if the woman truly meant to do him harm, his options would be limited. His silence seemed to be all the confirmation she needed, and when she took a careful step forward he found his arms tightening about Talitha in reflex, an action that did not go unnoticed if the curling of Ferona Levallans upper lip was anything to go by. The irony in the woman's name does not fascinate him as it once did right this moment, not while his own subconscious screamed at him that _this_ was _exactly_ the danger it had spoken of when he had recklessly chosen to step through the eluvian.

"Please, for her sake, put the weapon away"

He is grateful for the steady quality of his own voice, though it does little to calm Ferona, who looked ready to go for his throat, in the true fashion of her namesake.

Ferona….like the wolf.

She seemed about ready to take the final steps that would have allowed her to press her weapon upon him, when several things happened at once. Distant screams of panic, fear and anger floated towards them from the direction of the main camp, and as the woman twisted her body in their direction, Solas willed himself to fade into the background, the spell not quite the gift of invisibility, but an old and instinctual trick against unwanted eyes. Carefully he lay Talitha's still sleeping body to the ground, his own eyes already seeking the path back from where he came. Yet he froze, just as her mother did when the bushes just beyond the ring of willows began to rustle with the tread of those ill suited to stealth within the forest.

Ferona snarled when she turned and noted his absence, her head turning back just as quickly to the sounds of those ungainly footsteps, though not fast enough to see or avoid the arrow that sped through the willows and slammed into her shoulder, the impact spinning her in full circle before her staggering feet could plant themselves again.

Solas felt his blood turn artic when the men stepped through the hanging brances of the willows, their advance throwing a sickening red light in the wake of their steps. The bowman already had another arrow nocked in his bow, while his comrade wielded a heavy looking broadsword, both of them now advancing upon either side of the wounded woman.

He couldn't have planned for a more disastrous turn of events if he'd tried, and a selfish part of him wondered if this were perhaps a punishment for his foolish decision to intervene. But it was clear from the way their eyes fell upon Talitha with a barely suppressed glee, that this part at least, had nothing to do with him.

The activities of the red Templars had all but faded to nothing in the aftermath of their generals capture, and yet here stood two of them, and by the sound of the continued screams in the distance, there were more still within the Dalish encampment. It came as no surprise that Ferona's stance brooked no surrender even as the archer drew his arm back, the tension of that string a warning that he knew she would ignore while she stood between them and her daughter.

"Move woman, we will be taking the Inquisitor with us one way or another, if you persist….well i daresay that Samson will have almost as many uses for you as he does for her"

The name casually dropped by the sword wielding templar brought a barely suppressed growl to his own throat, and he was hardly aware of the way his body dropped into a crouch over hers, the gesture automatic and as primal as the desire to go for the throat. He didn't know how, or when, but the conviction in the red templars voice made one thing very clear.

Somehow, Samson was free, and the rage of a man torn away from glory by the actions of the Inquisition, was now focused upon the woman still deep in the dark waters of enchanted sleep.

Ferona bellowed and darted forward, the archer loosed his arrow, and Solas leapt without thinking.


	5. Chapter 5

It was quite possibly one of the stupidest things he had ever done, no logic could have explained it because there simply wasn't any logic behind the sudden uncoiling of tensed muscles that had thrown him into the almost suicidal leap towards Ferona. It was a mindless action in a moment of forgetful hubris, and one he would question heavily when he had the chance to do so. Protecting Talitha made some sort of masochistic sense at least, but risking his life for a woman who would take his head if she had the chance? Madness.

At the very least he'd had enough sense not to go so far as to put himself between the woman and the arrow, instead he struck Ferona with his full weight, knocking her heavily to the ground so that the arrow merely grazed her arm as it whistled past and disappeared into the trees. There was barely enough time to roll away from the brief tangle of limbs before Ferona launched herself to her feet, her sword sweeping upwards to stop the oncoming rush of another blade, the second templar now joining the fray. His broadsword rained down blow upon blow, keeping the older woman on the defensive as he kept his shield between them and forced her to take a step back with every step he took forward.

. Solas could barely credit the fact that they still couldn't see him, his concentration had been momentarily lost in the midst of his idiotic display of desperate gallantry and he had achieved little but to delay the inevitable unless he wished to intervene further, and that wasn't likely to happen again. no matter whose mother she happened to be.

The question of what he should do next had a simple answer; nothing. This was not his fight, his brief foray as some rough knight errant had been fuelled by adrenaline and fear for the woman who still remained ignorant in her deepened sleep. Any further heroics would be reserved purely for the moment when their attention turned from Ferona to Talitha while she remained in such a defenceless state.. Once more he had made her vulnerable in his attempt to aid her and he briefly wondered if he was ever going to learn when it came to such rash decisions.

There was an earsplitting roar and the archer loosed his arrow into nothingness as a huge bear came lumbering through the willows. Itt rose up on its hind legs and cuffed the templar across the head with one massive paw as he fumbled vainly at his quiver for another arrow. The man was thrown to one side like a doll, barely managing to roll onto his back before both paws came down heavily on his chest, accompanied by the sound of several ribs cracking under this devastating blow.

Another fierce bellow from Ferona drew his attention away from the bear just in time to see her duck beneath her assailants shield to finally get around behind him. The templar was armoured and stood a good foot taller than the Dalish woman, but she had spent years as the clan's first hunter, and an arm corded with years of heavily trained muscle, drove her sword through the back of his neck in an adder's strike. The templar dropped his shield and began to claw at his throat even as the tip of the blade pushed through bone and gristle to come out the other side.

The distant screams had now begun to draw closer, and a higher, thinner scream directly to his left, joined the terrifying chorus as the bears crushing jaws opened and encompassed the archers head, exerting pressure until that scream was suddenly cut off, half of his face coming away as the bear shook its captive violently. Now it turned it's dripping muzzle to Talitha, lumbering slowly towards her as her mother shoved the Templar off her blade with a foot planted at the small of his back. It was her lack of concern that stayed his hand and moments later the bear's great bulk became enveloped in that familiar green haze, Deshan Lavellan now standing in its place.

Deshan bent to the grass, ripping up handfuls to scrub his bloodied jaw clean, spitting off to one side, presumably to get the taste of the templar from his mouth. His familiar eyes took in his daughter's stillness, then the still faintly smouldering and blackened tree, his brow furrowing when his gaze fell upon Talitha again, one hand reaching out to rest upon her forehead as Ferona approached. Her face had been pulled into a rictus of effort as she had fought the templar, now the lines that marked her age were rearranging themselves into a strained expression as she knelt beside her husband.

"A battle not three feet away and she does not wake…there is something wrong here"

That strained look broke and Ferona's eyes grew sharp enough that Solas felt himself almost shrinking back as she began to jerk her head around the clearing, her fingers tightening about the short sword as she stood again.

"There was a man, an elf..he was here. He was _just_ here and then he…"

A roar that might have matched the bears suddenly interrupted her, and something broke through the thick curtain of the willows, hurtling through the air towards the pond where it landed limp, lifeless and oddly misshapen on the bank. The thing had clearly once been a man, but the lyrium had twisted the body into something monstrous. They had called them shadows, for the way they seemed to appear from nowhere, enraged and deadly with lethal growths of sharded lyrium where their hands had once been. This particular shadow appeared to be all the more disfigured for the fact that it's neck had been twisted almost all the way around.

Ferona did not relax her grip on the shortsword when the Iron Bull pushed his way through the willows in a stagger, Solas couldn't exactly blame the woman, when the Qunari moved, muscles had to get out of the way for other muscles, and it didn't help that his towering mass now shone with sweat and blood. All in all, the sight of the axe wielding giant provided enough of a distraction for him to bend his mouth to Talitha's ear, the one word command almost less than a whisper under his breath.

He did not expect the effect to be quite so immediate, and if he were utterly truthful, some part of him had hoped that the new mark would have no effect.

She shot up from the grass, eyes wild and unfocused while they tried to make some sense of her surroundings. It didn't take long, there was plenty to take in and draw a mental picture for her, Ferona's battle ready stance, the blood that framed the collar of her father's tunic, the distant screams and the Iron Bull's great bulk leaning against one of the sturdier looking willows as he began to inspect the mass of blood and meat that was his left shoulder, the centre of the wound gleaming with malignant points of red light.

Her sudden return to consciousness did not go unnoticed and both parents were at her side in seconds as the bewilderment began to leave her eyes. Bull rolled his one good eye in her direction, and when both gazes met the unspoken communication was palpable to Solas.

"How bad?"

"It's in deep, you going to do the honours boss?"

Ferona still hadn't relinquished the blade, but she seemed to take her cue from her daughter and no longer looked ready to spring at the Qunari, though her eyes were still constantly darting along the tree line as she hauled Talitha to her feet.

"Mother, i'll need your help, and your knife, and perhaps somebody could explain what the void is going on while i do this"

She approached Bull who slid down the tree with a short growl, one brow lifting when he was gently pushed onto his back, Talitha straddling his waist as Ferona handed over a wicked looking knife. Deshan was still looking at the void of flattened grass where she had been lying just moments before, his expression thoughtful.

"You'll need to put all your weight on his arm, this is going to hurt"

Ferona didn't bother to ask questions, she merely crouched beside the Qunari, setting her weapon within easy hands reach as Bull extended his arm for her.

"Hey Boss, I had a dream like this once, but there was less bleeding, more oil and lace"

Talitha looked down at his grin with a grim expression before her gaze moved to the wound. She hated hurting people, killing someone who was trying to kill her or someone she cared about was different, causing pain to one of the latter group did not sit well with her, which was why she never took well to the manual art of healing despite learning as much as she could from the surgeons at Skyhold. Her decisive nature had bled away somewhat and she hesitated with the knife poised to make the first cut.

"You know, I hate to interrupt what would make an interesting chapter in any story, but is now the time for the _really_ kinky shit?"

Varric didn't appear to be injured, but Bianca was in his hands and as he spoke, the familiar whir and click of the cocking mechanism could be heard before he loaded another bolt and turned towards the perimeter of the clearing.

"Jokes later, removing red lyrium shards now, and while I'm at it, perhaps you'd like to explain why Red Templars are attacking, didn't we wipe them out?"

Varric might have had a gift for the highly inappropriate, but already his presence had brought a calm that allowed her to make the first cut with the tip of the knife, carefully separating the flesh to find the shards buried beneath. Bull didn't make a sound, but the muscles in his extended arm came into sharp relief as his hand fisted and the next joke died on his tightly pressed lips.

"We had a runner arrive in the city about five minutes before all hell broke loose over here, Skyhold was attacked"

"What?! Oh crap, sorry Bull….Father, I need something to soak up this blood i can't see a damn thing….why were we attacked?"

"It was a diversion, somewhere in the chaos they managed to break into the cells, most of them were empty, but…"

"...Samson….got one!"

With everyone's attention thoroughly diverted, Solas felt safe enough to stand now, his careful tread inching him towards the hidden shape of the eluvian, though he froze at the mention of the former red templar general. Samson had been one of those factors that had failed to leave much of a lasting impression next to everything else that had happened after the well of sorrows , a forgotten thread that had ceased to be of importance to him once he was under lock and key, and with the ranks of the red templars severely thinned the idea of them appearing again seemed impossible.

"All right, so Samson is free, why attack here?"

She must have reached a nerve at that point, for Bull lost his battle of silence and swore loudly, his arm lifting until Ferona added her weight, with some effort, and pinned it back to the ground. Talitha didn't stop once she started, the knife parting more flesh in quick, precise cuts until another shard was flicked onto the grass. Varric held his aim at the trees, but he allowed his incredulity to find its way to his voice.

"Are you kidding me? You tore down everything he had handed to him by Corypheus, left him with nothing but a cell and time to remember who to blame, he's here for you, and likely to take down any of us as a bonus prize"

The distant clash of steel upon steel was suddenly not so distant and the harried look on her face strengthened into that grim line again as Solas watched her shove her feelings on the matter aside in order to extract the last of the lyrium quickly, though he wasn't quite fooled into thinking that it wasn't there in her head, a heavy thought that was just a step away from becoming yet another roiling mass of guilt as the screams floated their way from within the camp. Only when she seemed satisfied that she had removed the last of the red lyrium did she finally stand up, the bloodied knife still in her hands as something in her eyes turned from confused hurt to the hardened stare of a decision reached.

"Father, find Salshira"

Ferona cocked her head between her daughter and her husband who was now nodding and already turning to head out of the clearing, understanding only taking a moment to reach her.

"No, not again. Deshan we cannot let her go again, the gods know how many pieces she'll return with next time"

Deshan paused at the tree line and for a moment Solas thought he might just agree with his wife, the long look that settled upon Talitha bore a reluctance despite his swiftness to answer her command. Once more something silent but no less pointed passed between them and without another backwards glance he slipped through the trees. Ferona rounded on her daughter now, grasping her remaining arm until fingers dug into flesh.

"You can't do this Talitha, you have only just returned to us, you'll be no safer at Skyhold, look at what they have done to you already"

There was no protest from Bull or Varric here, perhaps they did believe that the Inquisition were truly responsible for all the pain visited upon her, or perhaps tact dictated that their voices would hardly be welcome at this point.

"I'm not returning to Skyhold"

"You...but where will you go?"

"Anywhere that isn't here...No, listen to me mother"

She clutched her mother's arm just as tightly, silencing Ferona who looked ready to just pick up her daughter and run with her if it meant that she could keep her from bolting.

"I have to get away from here and they have to see me doing it, if i don't they will kill everyone between them and me. Even if we somehow managed to repel them, how welcome do you think i would be here, the woman who brought red death down on the clan. It'll be worse than when they thought I worshipped Fen'Harel"

Solas saw the awkward but silent look that passed between Bull and Varric, both of them having the sense to keep their mouths shut more firmly than ever before, and not just because the revelation would cause an uproar between mother and daughter.

"I'm so sorry mother, i know I'm breaking your heart all over again, but it's the only way they will leave you be. Believe me, running again is the last thing I ever wanted, but if it means I can prevent complete slaughter then i will make them chase me from one end of this earth to another"

The steel in her voice was unmistakable, touched by sorrow that caught in her throat at the sight of her mother's distress, and much like Cassandra, Solas could see that Ferona was likewise beginning to understand that there was only so much she could protect her daughter from. She released Talitha's arm, only to draw her into a fierce embrace, that distress hardening into a determined line much like her daughters.

"You run girl, you run those bastards into the ground and you come _back_ to us"

"What do you need Boss?"

Bull had pulled himself to his feet once more, rolling his injured shoulder with only the barest of grimace's before he picked up his axe and stood beside Varric. The Dwarf looked equally alert and ready for instruction, but there was also a pained look to his eyes, he didn't like this plan any more than Ferona, but he had enough sense to know that now was not the time for debate. Solas _hated_ the plan, it was simple, effective and it put her in just as much danger as she had been when surrounded by demons.

" _Now you see, it will never end, death will always follow her, let it go"_

He watched Talitha pull away from her mother and knew that the voice of common sense spoke the truth, she had been swept up and caught within a loop of destruction that would never let her know peace, and yet even knowing this couldn't sever the last strands that tied him to her. He was just as trapped as she was.

"I need loud and violent, I want their attention before I leave, their _undivided_ attention"

Bull smirked as Varric tossed him an elfroot potion, the red liquid disappearing quickly down his throat, the glass tossed aside as the potion began to knit his torn shoulder together.

"Can do"

 **~~o0O0o~~**

Once within the safety of his own sanctuary, it would have been easy to simply step away from the eluvian, to let it grow blank and turn his mind to other things before he could convince himself into another course of action equal parts stupid and reckless. Sooner or later the Inquisition would hear of his appearance, and while his identity had been vague in Feron's case, they would have no such trouble putting a name to the mysterious figure. There was not a lot they could do with such information of course, but he had worked in so many layers of secrecy for a reason and it unsettled him to know how easily things could have gone wrong if someone like Varric or Cassandra had happened upon him in the clearing instead of the Dalish woman. Would he have had to finally face killing someone he might otherwise have considered a friend as opposed to a nameless enemy?

Even now, while he mentally scourged himself for being so foolish, the mirror called to him, _she_ called to him, and he felt a quiet sort of loathing for his own masochistic heart when he directed the mirror to follow her movements once more.

The four of them had cleared the treeline and stepped into what could only be described as complete chaos. Though the Inquisition had been thoroughly lulled into believing they had all but depleted the red templar ranks, those that raged through the forest of wycome proved that the templars had simply been biding their time, likely recruiting as they did so. How had they let this go unnoticed?

The air was filled with screams of pain and outrage as the elves battled the heavily armoured templars, but even the most cursory glance told him they were outnumbered, and when it came to sheer brute force and superior weaponry, there simply wasn't any contest. Dead elves littered the ground, and those that still lived were hard pressed to keep back the tide of lyrium addled berserkers.

Bull and Ferona peeled off from their small group, while Varric remained at Talitha's side, his first bolt catching a templar in the thigh and bringing him down to one knee, which served as a perfect setup for the first swing of the Qunari's two handed axe, the oversized blade parting the man's head from his shoulders. Now that he examined the scene beyond its central figure, he could see more members of the inquisition in the middle of the fray, their experience lending them some advantage against the mounting numbers.

Talitha's hand lifted as if to touch the sky beyond the the thick canopy of trees, a pose eerily reminiscent of the way she had closed rifts, only there was no spitting green light, just the warning rumble of thunder above before a ring of lightning slammed into the ground, yanking several of the templars to it's central point as forks of destructive blue-white light, struck within the circumference of the circle. The templars caught within began to cook in their own armour as the crackling energy crawled over them in delicate, spitting strands, their faces pulled into varying degrees of agony as flesh began to slough away, their armour splitting and beginning to pool at their planted feet.

She was moving even before the circle dissipated to leave an unrecognizable pile of flesh, bone and metal, her intentions set upon a Behemoth, currently occupied by Cassandra, Cullen and her own mother. Like the Shadow's, there was little to no humanity left in the towering creature that roared and slammed its red lyrium riddled fists into the shields now holding it at bay. Shards of lyrium came hurtling towards Talitha, who either didn't see them or simply refused to break her stride, and Solas held his breath until the familiar bulk of Blackwall and his shield stepped between them, the shards hitting and shattering against the tempered metal of the emblazoned griffon.

"Inquisitor, what the flaming hell…."

But she was already striding past him, her hand raised once again, ignorant of those surrounding her while she pulled her focus to one single point, a trick he had taught her, and not one that had been forgotten it seemed. As the Behemoth rose both its disfigured arms to bring them down again, it was hit in the face by several concentrated bolts of lightning, driving it backwards which gave the three figures at it's staggering feet, the perfect opening to press the attack. He hadn't seen her fight like this in a long time, not since the time when they had battled their way through the fade, the nightmares taunts only succeeding in making her angry rather than afraid. It had been duty that had propelled her through the crossroads, and the moment his name had been dropped, duty had turned to desperation, but now anger propelled her magic and as she launched yet another barrage of bolts at the Behemoth, he could see the fury written upon every line of her face.

There was another bellow, this one significantly less human than even the templars, and three figures came charging into the clearing created by heavy feet and fallen bodies. The bear led the charge with two other figures close behind, one of the harts bearing the chestnut gleam of her brother's animal form, with Salishira bringing up the rear. The true hart split off towards it's mistress while the other two charged into a group of templar archers who were taking aim upon those currently finishing off the Behemoth.

With an easy and practiced move, she grasped Salshira's saddle and swung herself onto his back, kicking out at a templar knight who attempted to pull her off again. The hart reared and brought it's hooves down hard in the centre of the knight's chest, knocking him backwards and kicking out at his unprotected face. Sitting upon the hart's back, she was suddenly more visible and already the templars were beginning to take notice, breaking off from their individual fights to charge towards their mounted prize. It was only then that Solas realized he'd been hoping that her plan wouldn't work, the idea of her being taken back to Skyhold far more preferable to the one that resulted in her being alone and pursued.

Every eye in the clearing was upon her now, Cassandra and Cullen both wearing identical expressions of disbelief as they began to realise her plan, Cullen even going so far as to push his way towards her, his shouts buried beneath the onslaught of noise from the Templars as they charged at the mounted rider. One swift kick to the flanks was all it took for the hart to go from standing into a full gallop, it's antlered head lifting in that familiar mournful cry as it flew through the trees at breakneck speed.

As they broke through the line of trees and into the fields beyond, she spared a glance over her shoulder to check that the Templars were still in pursuit, even going so far as to pull on the harts reins to slow him down. Sure enough, it was less than a minute before the templars burst through the trees like an angry horde of insects, their archers already letting more arrows fly as she dug her heels into Salshira's flanks once more and set him into another gallop.

Solas finally allowed himself to step back from the eluvian, falling into that same chair as he waved a hand at the silvered glass and watched it turn blank with undisguised relief. He felt drained somewhere in his soul, his night time excursion having gone awry and the events that followed had been a disaster, despite his being sure that for now, the demons had been held at bay. Yet she had drawn another kind of demon to her, one that would not be warded away by ancient markings, and he had no doubt now that her plan would succeed, the templars would pursue because there was nothing human left in them to understand anything else beyond the completion of their goal.

They might have been mindless and savage, but someone had been smart enough to understand that in attacking those she cared for, they would draw her out.

Fatigued and thoroughly heartsick, he could watch no more tonight, even when he knew that when he came to the eluvian again, it might show him no more than it's blank, mirrored surface when he called for her.

 **~~o0O0o~~**

 _The abandoned cabin has become her place now, it has also become something of a no man's land for everybody else who doesn't want to face the wrath of the Seeker or the Commander. They at least, have begun to understand her occasional desire for solitude and somehow it has become forbidden to encroach upon her territory, the one space in haven where nobody called for the Inquisitor. He isn't sure if it is his own confidant arrogance or their growing friendship that has exempted him from this unspoken rule, but nobody dares to call him back when he approaches and she has so far, never sent him away._

 _In Haven's main encampment, the arrival of the mages has caused something of an uproar. The templars are clearly not happy about the sudden influx of magic users, and the mages themselves are leary, despite Talitha making it clear that they were to come to Haven as allies and not conscripted prisoners. This decision is clearly not sitting well with the likes of Cassandra and Cullen, and even Sera has been heard to add her own opinion which wasn't uncommon, though usually reserved for less serious matters. Everybody is on edge and waiting for the first clash of wills, but so far the Inquisition soldiers appeared to be maintaining an uncertain peace by keeping both the mages and templars separated as much as they could._

 _He expects to find her exhausted but basking in the success of achieving the impossible, it wasn't every day you experienced time travel, defeated a powerful magister and brought hundreds of apostate mages into the fold. There would be untold political fallout of course, but that mattered little when held next to the fact that they finally had enough power to close the breach that still hung above them all._

 _Therefore he is surprised to find that she is not sat upon the old stump that now bears dozens of small carvings on its pitted surface, in fact he has to search for her before he finds her in the furthest corner of the freezing cabin, her knees drawn beneath her chin, her perpetually expressive face now slack and white aside from the shock-flesh beneath her eyes that give them an almost bruised appearance. For one moment she looks as though she is perched upon the very edge of sanity until he softly calls her name._

 _She doesn't flinch or jump, which would be preferable to the slow turning of her head in his direction and the empty quality of her eyes, as though she was staring through him. He calls her name again, a little sharper this time and she blinks, some semblance of life returning to her cobalt gaze, though it isn't much of an improvement. As they had travelled back to Haven from Redcliffe, she had seemed mostly unaffected, the adrenaline of their success still tearing its way through her. Now as he crouches on his haunches before her, he can see the cold sweat that coats her skin, and the slight tremble of her tightly clenched jaw._

 _He reaches out to lay a sympathetic hand upon her arm and has to suppress the urge to snatch it back again, she is icy cold and touching her is like touching marble. He bears the unpleasant tactile sensation however, her needs clearly outweighing his revulsion for this almost polar opposite of the woman he has come to know. Terror could have many effects upon a person and hers had rooted her to the spot, if he left her here now, she might well just remain there until she really did freeze to death._

" _Talitha, you are cold as ice, we need to get you near a fire, perhaps some food and some sleep…"_

 _She doesn't react to the first offerings, but the mention of sleep has her clutching both his arms in a death grip, those partially vacant eyes growing wide and wild as she shakes her head over and over again, more strands of hair coming away from it's loose knot to splay over her face, adding to the deranged look that is almost frightening to behold when compared to how she usually looked._

" _No...no sleep, I have to….i can't"_

 _She is both grasping him and trying to push him away, still shaking her head and trembling violently, about to step over the edge from shock into blind panic, and though he hates himself for doing so, he yanks one arm away to draw it back and deliver a sound slap to one side of her face. It isn't particularly hard and yet he regrets the action immediately even if it does seem to have yanked her back from the edge of hysteria. She touches her reddened cheek with one hand while the other seems absurdly occupied with smoothing out the twisted wrinkles she has created on the arm of his tunic, yet her eyes seem more alive now, more inclined to focus upon his._

" _Talitha, what has happened?"_

 _For a moment those eyes slide out of focus again and he is almost tempted to shake her when they snap back to him, as though she had to briefly fish for the words to answer him, leaving her mind partially unoccupied for the few seconds it took to find them._

" _You died. You and Cassandra...I found you both, locked up and, oh god's the stench and the cold and you were both.."_

 _She reaches out and he grows still as chilled fingers touch his face, almost as if she wishes to check that he was real, or perhaps she was seeing another face, one that has been burned into her mind enough that a ghostly afterimage remained._

" _They were coming,_ _ **he**_ _was coming and I couldn't move, he said I would kill us all if i moved...and then they came through the door and...and they tossed you to the floor, like a fucking doll, you and Cassandra both, and you were_ _ **dead**_ _!"_

 _He barely feels her strengthless fist as she thumps it against his shoulder as if he should be partially to blame for his dying. The Tevinter mage had only given them a brief overview of what had occurred in that nightmarish future, he'd likely left out the fact of his and Cassandra's death because it had not been important at the time and it was hardly an easy subject to bring up in any kind of company. He personally feels no dread for the future that has not yet happened, his own death in that future failing to move him, though it is clear that the same could not be said for Talitha._

" _I don't want to sleep, if i sleep i might wake up and I'll still be there and you'll both still be dead. It's not the same, it's not like seeing bodies on a battlefield, all those nameless faces...you forget them in time, but this is….your eyes were open and red and you were looking and not seeing, please Solas, don't make me...don't make me sleep"_

 _He is tempted to tell her that a time will come when those she has come to care for_ _ **will**_ _die, and there would be no do over that would bring them back to life, but he cannot bring himself to do so because her fear is far too palpable and it would be all too easy to set her upon the path of hysteria once more._

 _He is not equipped for this, his own emotions still carrying the atrophy of the long sleep, but even the simplest man should know what to do at a time like this, and though his mind is ill equipped his body seems to remember enough to ignore the corpse like chill of hers long enough to draw it into the circle of his arms, because there isn't a single word he can say that will make things better in this moment. She is stiff and unyielding against him as he finally allows his body to fall into sitting, pulling her halfway over his lap despite the inescapable awkwardness of the situation. He ignores the chill that is creeping past the defences of his clothing and settling upon his own skin, just as he ignores the growing darkness and the unfamiliar but growing feeling of protectiveness that has gone beyond the scope of student and mentor._

 _Little by little the stiffness leaves her limbs along with the continuous tremble, and it is almost an hour before he realises that somewhere along the line, she has slipped into the sleep she had so desperately feared._

 **~~o0O0o~~**

He almost lasted a full day before the ever persuasive image of her being torn apart by templars finally became far too vivid to ignore. In the absence of knowing, his mind had provided hundreds of graphic details that all came together in moving images that froze his blood over and over again. When he once again submitted to the lure of a definitive answer and sat himself before the eluvian, he found her still astride Salshira, their journey continuing in darkness despite her passing a well lit village that would have surely welcomed the Inquisitor of all people.

The Inquisition itself was in a quiet sort of uproar, his one remaining agent there reporting an unrest between the advisors, half of whom wanted to pick up her trail, while the other half argued against the idea, stating that the Inquisitor had to know what she was doing.

And so began his two month long vigil.

She travelled in darkness, circumventing every town, village and lonely shack that she passed along the way. Solas began to realise that she avoided any kind of population not because she feared that she might be recognized, but because she refused to lead her pursuers anywhere close to people they might decide to interrogate for her whereabouts. Sleep was found during the day, in whatever vacant cave, crude shelter or dry ground she could find, though from what he observed such sleep was thin and fragmented by sudden waking either from bad dreams or the sound of someone's approach.

She did not seem to even attempt to cover her tracks, if anything she appeared to leave as many clues behind as possible while maintaining enough distance to stay ahead. Her fires went uncovered, the carcasses from her kills were left on display when she moved on from one meagre camp to the next. It would have been tempting to think that this was all for nothing if not for the reports here and there from well placed agents who observed the march of the templars, who were indeed following the trail she had left behind, marching with a relentlessness that didn't speak of their giving up any time soon.

What madness had struck Samson to have her pursued this far?

He only needed to think back on Varric's words to have his answer. She had shamed Samson, this one woman had taken away everything that he had valued, his army, his position of authority, even the armour that had made him such a formidable opponent. These things had been a sort of sick redemption for a man who had already allowed himself to fall to rock bottom once, to be dragged there again had been too much. It still begged the question as to who had orchestrated his escape, but that was a small curiosity next to the one that asked where exactly Talitha was leading them.

He didn't believe that she intended to lead them on this chase forever, if he knew her as well as he thought he still did, she would choose somewhere remote, somewhere that stood no chance of innocents getting in the way of the final confrontation.

So he waited and watched, his own work still crawling along at a meticulous pace, but gaining ground inch by inch all the same. As the days became weeks, watching her progress became as much a part of his routine as sleeping and eating.

The journey was leaving its mark upon her however. Her troubled sleep and the continuous travel left their own obvious physical marks, but it was her mental state that troubled him the most. She was alone but for the company of Salshira, and while such a state of being had once been part of that grand dream to see the world, he rather doubted that this was what she had in mind. It was this more than anything that kept him returning to the eluvian, each time wondering if today were the day that she would finally break.

She did not break however, be it strength of will or simple sheer bloody mindedness, something kept both her and the hart going, until they finally came upon the silver sands of the Hissing Wastes.

He should have known that this was her destination, the wastes were as barren and unoccupied as she no doubt desired, but it also held a savage sort of beauty that had called to her even amidst the bloodshed as they tore apart camp after camp of Venatori. They had toured the terrain from one end to the other, uncovering old mysteries of an ancient dwarven clan that had been lost to the sands long ago, and for a moment he had been allowed to see her as she might have been had she not wandered into such catastrophic events.

Even here she sought the remotest of locations, driving Salshira to the very outskirts where the winds were strongest and the sand abraded flesh left uncovered. Here she found a miserable looking cave that none the less provided shelter for herself and the hart, and it was here that her journey seemed to finally come to an end. For almost a week he watched her settle into a routine. Every day she would lead the hart to what water she could find, occasionally coming across the waste's less than friendly indigenous creatures. These were dispatched with little to no passion, in fact it seemed that the wastes no longer inspired the same enthusiasm as it once did, though this was perhaps understandable given her reason for being there.

He still resolutely kept himself from seeking out her dreams while she had travelled, though now the temptation became sharper, the desire to read her state of mind stronger while she seemed to grow weaker. After another week of nothing but sand, harsh winds and still no company than that of the hart, and the toll was beginning to show more clearly. Despite her hunts, she seemed to eat little, and only emerged from the cave to set the wards he had taught her, sometimes traipsing half a mile from her camp to do so, this early warning the only sort of preparation she appeared to make. She had grown thinner, her skin scraped and roughened by the harsh winds and the sharp sands that blew with them. Her face had become gaunt, the eyes listless, though there was little for them to settle upon in this desolate space she had chosen.

The unconscious sorrow began as a hidden seed in his heart, which grew day by day as he continued to watch over her progress or lack thereof, and though he somehow knew from the very start, the realisation didn't quite find him fully until the day she happened across one of the hunters that roamed the wastes in search of rare game. They shared a meal upon calmer sands than the ones in which she had made her temporary home. Even in this rare moment of company, she offered nothing of herself but the briefest and most perfunctory answers to the hunters questions, the man having no idea who she was. Before they parted, she surprised the hunter by handing over Salshira's reins, eschewing the coin and pelts offered in exchange, That he would find a way to deliver a letter to Skyhold while taking the most secretive route out of the wastes, were the only prices that she demanded, though she herself paid a much larger one that day as she watched the man lead the hart away, her faithful companion confused and reluctant to leave at first, and it was she who had to turn her back on him, her eyes shining yet too dry for the tears to really fall.

" _Do you see what you have done?"_

He didn't even try to argue with that insidious part of his mind when it spoke up, because he _did_ see, all too clearly. It had been her own choice to separate herself from the world so completely, and part of that _was_ due to the templars and the violence they brought with them, she would not have that violence wrought upon those she loved or anyone she might consider to be innocent. Yet he couldn't help but understand because he had allowed himself to know her far more intimately than he had ever planned. The templars might well have been the issue that finally forced her hand, but this course of action had been preordained the moment he had shattered her heart for the second time.

One way or another, whether at the hands of the templars or at the whim of the cruel elements, Talitha Lavellan, the woman he could confess to love when all his armour was stripped away, had come to the wastes to die.

 **~~o0O0o~~**

 _Haven's fall had been different, it had not marked her with the hysterical terror as her brief trip forward in time had, that fear had been reserved for the rest of them as they waited on the freezing mountains and watched the snow bury what remained of their old home. The despair had swept through the camp, wearying hearts and fraying tempers. It had been a long time since any sorrow other than the one that drove him continuously forward, had ever touched more than the surface of his heart. But as he looked out upon the dark and featureless field of untouched snow between here and what remained of Haven, he could not think upon the loss of those smiling eyes and not feel a weight upon that unused heart._

 _His elation upon her unexpected return was quieter than most, but no less tangible, and as he finally allowed his wonder of her grow, the dim realisation that she meant more to him than a useful tool, grew along with it._

 _He had watched them kneel before her as they sang, and not a one of them truly saw the fear this inspired in her. Such worship scared her, it made each one of their possible deaths all the harder to bear upon shoulders that had never meant to wear such a mantle. He understood their need to see her as something more than what she was, and yet it still angered some small part of him to see them in the act of borderline worship._

 _Then they had placed a sword in her hand and declared her Inquisitor. Again he was the only one to notice that this was not what she truly wanted, but with every eye within the newly acquired fortress of Skyhold upon her, with every hope pinned upon her, how could she refuse? He had found himself faintly disgusted with the advisors who all but thrust the position upon her with no real warning, their faith in her was inspiring, but it was also dangerous, and what made matters worse, was the knowledge that this was how it had to be, how it would always have to be while she bore the mark of his tragic mistake._

 _No, Haven's demise had not inspired fear in her, but it had roused her anger. Anger at the lives that had been lost, anger at the creature that had appeared amidst their place of safety, showing them that nowhere was truly safe, and anger at those who would call her Inquisitor and look upon her with rapt devotion she had neither asked for, nor wanted. Her desire for seclusion, even from him, had grown, and when duty did not permit her to hide , her moods swung from quiet, to determined and eventually her temper had began to make an appearance in impatient fits and starts._

 _It was then that Varric sought him out again, to tell him what he already knew. The Inquisitor was slowly unravelling under the pressure of her new title, and something had to be done. For once he did not argue that he was best equipped for such a task._

 _The root of her ire was simple. She did not comprehend why someone like her should deserve such devotion from people she barely knew. It was hard to see herself as anything more than what she was, a Dalish woman who had fallen into a run of bad luck, one who survived by an entirely different kind of luck and a title that held others in awe. She needed something simpler than the idea of unwarranted worship, and this was something he could provide._

 _She had been suspicious of his request to begin with, but he had preyed upon her curiosity, which always seemed to override everything else in most cases, and this time was no different. In the privacy of her own quarters, he bid her to lay upon her bed, ignoring her flippant remarks about his heavy handed version of flirtation as he took up his own place of rest on one of the couches. Though she protested the idea as 'silly', she none the less fell into sleep quickly, making him wonder how long it had been since her dreams had been undisturbed. When the sound of her breathing slowed further to indicate the depth of her sleep, he allowed himself to follow and guide her sleeping mind to a dream of his own making._

 _She is less than pleased when Haven comes into focus for them both, whole and unharmed yet utterly devoid of any life but theirs. She plants her feet and folds her arms, her eyes narrowing to a glare that is unfamiliar without the constant gleam of mirth in them to soften the expression._

" _Solas i have neither the time nor the heart to be here of all places. Why would you bring me here?"_

" _Haven is familiar, it will always be important to you"_

" _Perhaps, but now it's just a pile of rubble and broken bodies buried under tons of snow, why would i wish to see it in my dreams when I see it every waking second. every time some poor deluded sod looks at me like I'm the second coming of Andraste?"_

 _He ignores her attempts to sting him with her words and mounts the snow dusted steps towards the old chantry building, refusing to look over his shoulder to see if she following, knowing that her ever present curiosity would compel her to match his steps soon enough. As predicted she eventually follows him down into the dungeons where he had first seen her. She had seemed so very fragile then, and he had remembered his own dismay at the irony of his mark attaching itself to a Dalish no less._

" _Do you intend to guide me through all of my worst memories Solas, because i'd like to forget the one about me getting stuck up a tree next to a bee hive when i was eight if you don't mind"_

 _He brushes off her sharp humour, though he does remind himself to one day ask her about_ _ **that**_ _particular adventure another time. Instead he looked upon the spot where she had lay just months before, cold as ice and lost in what he thought might be a permanent state of dreaming._

" _Here. Right here is where I sat beside you as you slept, studying the anchor"_

 _Her churlish expression falters a little now, they have never spoken of the events after her emergence from the fade in any great detail. She had never sought to ask and he had never offered because it hardly seemed to matter with so much in front of them._

" _I would ask how much you could possibly learn from just looking at the thing, but then it's you, so…."_

 _She shrugs, but the gentle taunt hides the complement within and he bears the recognition of his efforts with the same quiet dignity as always._

" _I ran every test I could imagine, searched the fade, yet found nothing"_

 _He turns his own rare version of a grin upon her now, far softer than hers for it still feels somewhat unfamiliar to his mouth, though he can't help it because the memory of Cassandra's threats still amuse him for his own hidden reasons._

" _Cassandra suspected duplicity, she threatened to have me executed if i didn't produce results"_

" _She was desperate.."_

 _She bites at her lip, a nervous gesture he has catalogued along with all the others, though he can't accurately pinpoint which particular nerve had been struck here. Once her imprisonment was over she seemed to view it as an unfortunate but practical mistake upon the Seeker's part, he's never once heard her use it against the woman, not even in a passing joke._

" _I would have protested had I not been unconscious, but then I suppose being awake and chained wouldn't have granted me much levity. All right Solas, this is very...illuminating but why here, i still don't…"_

 _He turned away from the cells now, forcing her to follow suit, to chase him for her answer. Back outside the wind plucked at their clothing, the accuracy of his dreams depicting the chill well enough for her to shiver slightly as she looked out upon Haven as it was._

" _You were a mystery, you still are"_

" _Oh come on Solas, I'm about as complex as a spoon once you get past the mark"_

 _He frowns, shaking his head because she still didn't understand._

" _Nonsense, the mark is but a tool, it has no direction without your will, without the courage to use it as you have done. There is also the fact that you, a mortal, stepped out of the fade and lived, that is unheard of. Meanwhile the breach continued to grow, any spirits I might have consulted had fled, and as you continued to sleep, I was all but ready to flee"_

 _Her raised brow speaks of disbelief, her faith in him remaining in tact enough for her to have a hard time believing the notion of him abandoning them at such a perilous moment. It's almost tempting to hide the truth of his own fear, but they were here for her, not to soothe his conscience, she needed to know that fear lay within the hearts of all men, not just those upon whose shoulders rested the heaviest of weights._

" _I told myself...one more attempt to close the breach...but i failed, the breach continued to expand and grow and i resigned myself to flee...until"_

 _It takes but the smallest exertion of his will to pull her mind towards the memory. He doesn't bother to dress it up with much accuracy beyond the moment when he had taken her hand and drawn it towards that first rift. The image flashed before them, brief but vivid, leaving faint green afterimages in their vision for a few moments. The permanent expression of impatience with the world around her is slowly starting to dissolve, and he finds this pleases him beyond his own pride in reaching her where others could not._

 _It pleases him enough that he does not realise when it is time to curb his own enthusiasm, the usual mental wards slipping in the dawn of curious light finding her eyes along with the twitch at the corner of her mouth that all but begs to be pushed that little further into the smile he remembers._

" _I realised then that you held the key to our salvation, yet I was as selfish as the rest, never thinking to question how heavy a burden we were placing upon your shoulders"_

 _She shifts on the spot, slightly uncomfortable with the blunt nature of his confession, though she does not silence him or attempt to correct him._

" _But then you accomplished the impossible, you sealed it with but a gesture, and right then, i felt the whole world change"_

 _It is too late to draw the words back onto his tongue, too late not to notice the way her features draw together first in confusion, before they softened into something else. Now her eyes were upon him, unrelenting in their slanted stare, the curiosity of her smile tugging at places long forgotten and for a moment he was almost afraid._

" _Felt the whole world change? I've been paid a few compliments in my time Solas but that one stands as unique"_

 _One step, two and he's almost tempted to hold up a hand as if to ward her away, because with every step she takes his sluggish heart slips into an irregular beat, and it's a work of effort not to let his own nerves destroy that outward calm. He had not anticipated this._

" _It was a figure of speech"_

 _It's only half a lie and yet he hates himself for it nonetheless, because such cowardice never used to be part of his nature, and briefly he is reminded of that younger self, the one who would have seen this woman as a prize to be won._

" _I'm aware of the analogy Solas, but you aren't prone to mixing your metaphors"_

 _There is a gentle pressure in those eyes, one that bids him to take a leap whilst simultaneously promising to never push, and it is hard to look upon her like this and not speak the truth, or at least the parts that he could. All his careful planning, all the lies crafted on the spur of the moment, have not prepared him for this in the slightest. He can't even blame it on her, for it was yet again his own foolish words that have stepped casually across the line that marked them as friends all this time. He cannot even begin to explain to her the enormity of his feelings and the danger they represent at so crucial a time, and he must settle for a shrouded honesty._

" _You change….everything"_

 _And she did, in more ways than she could comprehend. She was the ghost that refused to stay pale, so much so that her inner light reflected upon those around her, made them seem almost as real to him as she did. Here was a woman who defied most traditions in order to follow her own path, and even when that path had been redirected by another, she still sought other ways to live by her own will, even as the world around her continued to make this all but impossible at times. She forced parts of him out of their long practiced lethargy, never knowing that she was teaching even as she was taught._

" _Sweet talker.."_

 _He doesn't even have time to appreciate the renewed quality of amusement in her voice. The kiss comes from nowhere, the briefest space of time when the world narrows down to softness, warmth and the sharp scent of lightning and pine suddenly closer than it has ever been before. In the space of just a few seconds, he feels closed doors blown wide open, old sensations mixing with even older feelings. They lurch from his subconscious like long dead corpses given new life, still easing the decrepitude from their limbs when she steps away._

 _The kiss was brief, chaste and...not enough._

 _Reborn feelings cry out with a thirst remembered, unsatisfied with just the barest of tastes and uncaring of the carefully placed walls he's set about himself. He watches the incredulity of her own impulsive action find her face, and as she turns away to hide the growing flush that suddenly graced the sharp angles of her cheekbones, he moves without allowing a single thought to intervene, grasping her shoulder before she can escape him._

 _The slightest turn of her body is all that it takes for his starved mouth to find her own, the renewed warmth of her lips moulding to his as if designed to fit, designed to perfectly match the roaring rush of hunger that takes him as hard as a strike to the gut. There is no leash to tug upon his sense of propriety, it has temporarily snapped the moment he finds the seam of her lips parting, his tongue taking this for invitation to invade the wet warmth beyond. Electric sensations as sharp as her magic charge up and down the length of his spine, compelling him to pull her closer, to coax her own tongue into relenting to his, his throat convulsing as if it is his intent to devour and swallow down the very taste of her._

 _Whole worlds ceased to matter in those few moments in which he becomes drunk upon her, the dream wavering as if to display exactly how effectively she unbalanced his control. Not that she see's this and he can only sense it in the periphery of his own mind. When he finally does pull away, if only to breathe, he is immediately struck by the unfocused quality of those cobalt eyes, deciding on impulse that he likes that look well enough to capture her mouth again, willingly losing himself in sensation. This was like taking a step back to a time when all the responsibilities that sat upon his own shoulders didn't exist, when youth would have made such a conquest a thing to celebrate. This was a thirst being slaked, a desire being realised. This was…_

" _ **...Dangerous. Oh how stupid could you be?"**_

 _The tremulous cry of his own subconscious has an immediate effect, and he is pulling away from her with as little thought as it had taken to kiss her in the first place. This wasn't right, not even in a place like this where he was strongest in his confidence. Even in a dream, such an action, such feelings, are so very treacherous, and even as the words of regret fumble inelegantly in his mouth, he can already sense that it is far too late._

 _Too late for her because even now she is looking upon his apologies with only the faintest of interest, something new alight in her eyes, all too ready to challenge his excuses._

 _Too late for him because somewhere in the wild warmth of that kiss, he has already decided that he wants her._

 **~~o0O0o~~**

He had grown so used to the monotony of her lonely routine, that for a few days he almost dared to hope that there would be no final confrontation for her and the templars. Perhaps they would have lost her trail on the edges of the wastes, or perhaps Samson had devised a more worthy task for them, one that didn't involve chasing a Dalish woman from one end of Thedas to the other. However the fact that the eluvian remained constantly trained upon her now, even while he slept, blatantly betrayed his burgeoning hope that they had given up on finding her.

Therefore, when the distant wail of her wards found his ears, he barely registered the shattering of the vial that slipped through his fingers as he pushed away from his workbench and crossed the room to stare into the mirror once more, hardly aware that his heart had risen to his throat. She showed no such surprise herself, the slow turn of her head towards the warning sound reminding him of the time he had found her huddled in the corner of the old healers cabin.

Outside the wind howled worse than ever, whipping the sand into a whirling frenzy that made visibility difficulty, and her staff soon doubled as a means to stay on her feet as those winds slammed into her rapidly thinning frame, snatching greedily at the loose material of her robes as she stepped out of the cave. He was only partially aware of a tension in his own body as he stood before the eluvian, his outward calm belying the acid churn and roil of his insides. Over the course of the last couple of months he had began to see reason with the voice that warned him of the consequences his further interference might bring. It had been hard to adhere to it's advice until he began to realise the fatalistic quality of her own plans.

Too much had been taken from her and there had not been enough left to cover the holes left in her heart and mind, she had reached her limit, and in doing so, had chosen the last freedom truly left available to her, the choice of where and when to die. His understanding did not make it any easier to watch her struggle against the harsh winds towards an enemy she barely stood a chance of beating alone, but he understood that she would try, if only so it would not seem so much like suicide to a woman who had valued life enough to give up her own dreams in order to save thousands. This whole situation was a mean compensation for all that she had sacrificed, it sickened his heart and played upon that part of him that never wished to see her light extinguished, but this was her choice, her last choice, and what could he possibly gain either of them by interfering now?

To those that would look upon the calm waters of his face now, he would seem cold and uncaring to the extreme, but he had seen what impulse and reaction to his love for her had done one time too many. Every time he influenced her life, ruin and pain were not far behind, and though he could have murdered each and every one of the approaching templars with but a fleeting thought, what then? What would he say to the woman whom he denied even a meaningful death? She would never join his cause and he could never bring himself to abandon it, what good would it do to drag her from the brink of death, only to deliver it on the heels of a cataclysmic event mere years later? Better to let her have this last choice, better to say a silent farewell to that very last piece of his humanity, to grow cold and distant enough that the thought of the atrocities he must commit would no longer matter, for she would not live to witness them.

He watched her squint her eyes against the shifting sands, her visibility narrowed to just a few feet in front of her, her body bowed under the weight of borderline malnourishment and the heavy winds, and prepared himself to be witness to her final moments, it was the very least he could offer her, though she would never know,

The arrow slipped through the sands like a fish through water, the reedy whistle of rushing air buried beneath the howl of the wastes, finding it's mark high up on her leg and bringing her to one knee with a wounded cry. Now his eyes swept back and forth over the shifting sands, his heart climbing higher despite his acceptance of her fate, his observance as much a punishment to himself as it was a mark of honour to her.

He prayed to nobody in particular for it to be quick, and when he saw the first templar loom out of the sands towards her, one look at his triumphant expression told him that no prayer would suffice.

Her first attempt at a spell only produces the faintest of those familiar blue-white lines, and it barely alights before it is drowned out, and he could see why as more shadows began to approach, growing sharper with definition as they approached. He watched her sickened expression and knew what she was feeling now. Even he had felt the touch of the templars silencing spells, to have his connection to the fade muffled had been akin to being blinded and deafened at the same time, and yet _his_ connection had always been far too strong for the spell to do much more than disorientate him. For her, the sensation must have been terrible, and not for the first time he bemoans that she could not have picked a more merciless end for herself.

She fought against the consuming sensation of the their silencing and the winds that still raged against them all, just enough to lift her gaze to meet the one who had first approached. He stood above her now, breathing hard and grinning through teeth that were stained red. When he bent to grasp her throat in one armoured hand she knocked it away, rousing laughter from the loose ring of eight or nine figures that now surrounded them in a circle.

"You shouldn't have made us chase you Lavellan"

That voice rang alarm bells in his head, there was too much unsuppressed delight in its inflections, too much eagerness for this to be the kind of man who would offer a quick death. She could see it too, perhaps she also heard it in his voice or maybe it was in the scarlet gleam of those eyes as he bent close enough for her to count the pores on his skin. She responded with a jerk of her head, the front of her skull connecting with his unprotected nose, a move she had no doubt learned from Sera, a woman who was almost an expert at making people angry, and that was exactly what Talitha was hoping to accomplish. The templar swore and delivered a heavy backhanded blow to the side of her face. Solas felt his fingers digging into the mirror's frame when she sat up again and spat a mouthful of her own blood to one side.

The others seemed to find this highly amusing, they could afford to, they had her surrounded with her magic subdued, their laughter sounding shrill and broken as they taunted their comrade.

"Put your face too close to the dog and it'll snap Carroll. Why don't you feed her your fingers next"

Carroll responded by hauling her to her feet by the front of her robes and driving a heavy fist into the soft meat of her belly, the ugly gagging sound she made when her breath was stolen caused Solas' hands to tighten on the frame until the knuckles bled white. Every note of her suffering caused a new wound inside him, forcing him to clutch the at the chains of his own resolve while the lunatic laughter of the templars forced its way between his ears. This wasn't right, wasn't _fair!..._ It was…"

" _...her choice. You cannot interfere again"_

The sound of her own laughter filtering through laboured breath pulled a soft gasp of bewilderment from his lips. It was not that she had chosen ridicule as her next weapon against their desire to torment that confused him, but the fact that it was utterly genuine. He had heard that very same laughter time and time again, and would recognize if it were forced, how in the void could she possibly find _anything_ amusing at this point? The sound seemed to disturb the templars more than when she had been armed, and they passed careful looks between themselves as Carroll shook her in his grasp.

"What have you got to laugh about bitch?"

For a moment she isn't able to get the words out, every time her eyes met his scarlet stare the laughter rose higher and choked the words she was trying to expel.

"Your C-Carroll? Y-you used to have a little...b-boat. Cullen told me, they called you B-Bowser because you used to diddle the innkeeper's wife, and she would bark like a s-seal when you…."

There was something frightening about the way her laughter barely found a pause, even when he backhanded her again, splitting the skin along one cheekbone, and resigned to the fate of her choices or not, Solas couldn't stop the long growl that rose from his throat.

"Shut up!"

"They used to s-s-ew dead fish into your mattress when you were on duty, it t-took you days to realise. Th-they gave you dock duty because y-you always threw up at the h-h-harrowings!"

For just a moment, the murder in Carroll's eyes almost translated via the fist that clenched at his side as her laughter once more became uncontrollable and she was prevented from doubling over only by his grip on her robes. Only solas saw the hint of relief in her gaze when she thought she had finally pressed upon the right nerve, though he found he couldn't match it. For all that he was determined to stand vigil in her last moments, he did not think he would ever have to endure watching her being beaten to death.

With a roar of rage Carroll threw her back to the ground, his heavily booted foot kicking out again and again, connecting with her ribs, the small of her back and the sharp angle of her hip. Each blow unloaded a fresh stream of adrenaline into Solas' blood until it roared through his veins and made his heart hammer in his chest. his body jerking in sympathy with every steel booted kick as though struck himself. That rising growl became a full throated snarl of incandescent fury when the next blow caught her in the chest, and he turned from the sight of her curled and defenceless form to sweep an arm across the nearest workbench, scattering bottles, papers and ancient pieces of pottery to the floor. This wasn't nearly enough to divert his anguish and when her next breath left her in a pained gasp his magic lashed out at the workbench itself, lifting the heavy wood to hurl it into a bookshelf on the other side of the room with an almighty crash.

Beneath that white hot rage was a smaller voice that simply begged over and over again.

 _Let it end, let it end, let it end, Let it end before i damn the consequences_

" **Carroll**!"

The warning shout drew his attention as well as Carroll's, the man already readying himself for another blow. For a wonder, he stopped as if he only just realised that they were surrounded by his cursed brethren and Solas watched him visibly reach for that calm as he took a step back. The sight of her trying to raise her body from it's prone position was disturbingly piteous, her limbs shook with the effort to simply prop herself up on one arm and once again he was so very close to breaking a promise because he simply had to turn away from the blood and swelling that already began to deform her features.

"What are….you waiting for….coward. Kill me and return home to your Master like a good lad"

Solas pressed the heels of both hands to his forehead, never had his courage failed him quite so badly as it was failing him now, the simple act of turning back to the eluvian suddenly monumental in scope.

And then Carroll said something that made him feel as if all the blood had suddenly drained from his body at once.

"Is that what you think is happening here, you think we chased you to the ends of the earth just to kill you?"

There was a piercing whistle and Solas snapped his head around in time to see something else beginning to loom out of the grainy darkness. The foghorn call of a gurn preceded the squeak of wheels from the cart that it pulled slowly into view, the rattle of the iron cage set on the back drawing everyone's gaze. But while the templars grinned in another sort of triumph, Talitha's expression was one of muted horror. Carroll turned back to that open mouthed stare and now it was his turn to laugh as he crouched before her, arms resting on his knees while he contemplated the dawning of her understanding.

"If you think Samson is going to let you go that easily you aren't half as smart as they say you are. He's had a long time to think about what he's going to do to you. So we'll load you onto this cart, and perhaps we'll let you heal yourself enough to last the journey home"

No.

He had set aside his own possessive nature in preparation to witness the death she had willingly walked into, securing it with the knowledge that this was her last choice and therefore it had to be respected no matter the pain it would cause him. But Carroll's delighted announcement caused that presence to strain against its bonds, spilling scalding rage into his head as his mind provided a hundred foul indignities a man like Samson might visit upon her once he had her in his grasp.

" _You can't, you promised, she will lead you to nothing but your ruin"_

" _Samson will do worse than beat her and you know it"_

" _You_ _ **can't**_ _!"_

" _You_ _ **must**_ _!"_

It was her voice that cut through the warring nations of his own mind, that voice which had always found its way past his defences, planting herself firmly within his soul until she had all but enveloped it in the simplicity of her love for him.

"You can't make me heal myself, and i think you got a little to enthusiastic earlier, i can feel one of my rib's digging into my lung. How happy will Samson be when you deliver a corpse to his feet Carroll?"

If she believed that this threat would move Carroll in any way, she appeared to be wrong, for his confidence only seemed to grow along with the ugly smile that split his lips and made him seem all the more manic. He gestured to one of the templars who seemed to be waiting for this cue to peel off from the group and head towards the illuminated cart.

"You'd be surprised at what we'll be able to make you do Lavellan"

Solas didn't understand what he was seeing at first, perhaps his own mind sought to confuse him in defence of the sudden terror that seemed to grip her as the templar pulled something from the back of the cart. He thought he had seen the full scope of her fear that day in the cabin, but this went beyond hysteria, and her scream cut into him like a serrated blade. He watched her fight against the pain to push her feet against the sand, trying to gain leverage enough to pull herself away from Carroll who moved behind her to grip both her shoulders, holding her in place as she thrashed and bucked against him. The screaming didn't seem to end, barely pausing in the moments where she managed to catch her breath, only to start again, the sound reaching for the chains that bound his outrage, snapping them one by one.

"Hold her still, if we mess this up he'll have our Maker damn heads on a platter"

Another of the templar's stepped forward, and she took yet another blow to the side of her head. This one cut off her screams as though a switch had been thrown, and even amidst his own dawning horror, Solas had to admit some relief for the loss of her consciousness.

Now he was able to clearly see the source of her terror, the source of her greatest fear, a fear that went beyond death and pain, a fate she considered worse than any other. The room around him began to shake. glassware rattled with a shivering chime, books fell from their shelves and the crystals he had discarded, shuddered across their various surfaces before exploding into dusty shards. The storm of his rage had found a new boiling point, it stiffened his fingers into claws, bared his teeth and brought that baleful blue fire to his eyes. His promise meant nothing now, nor did her wishes or the failing cries of his own good sense.

This rage was new and yet it came from something very old, an instinctive response to the terror of one perceived as his. The man who would have willingly allowed her to die in the name of respect, was suddenly a million years away, and in his place stood a creature comprised of vengeance and hate. Even in his darkest days, his power had never felt so fraught with the lust for blood as it did now. His very essence _demanded_ that he leave nothing behind but rended flesh and broken bone.

Solas watched the templar raise the glowing sunburst brand, and as it was lowered towards her brow, he released a howl that pricked the ears of every wolf that roamed Thedas.


	6. Chapter 6

See the stone set in her eyes, see the thorn twist in her side _._  
~With or without you - U2~

~~o0O0o~~

" _Father, why are they so afraid of me?"_

" _They are not afraid of you child. They fear that the old wolf whispers in your ear"_

" _But that's silly, they're just statues, they can't speak"_

" _And if they did little Hare, What would you say?"_

" _I'd ask him not to be so scary"_

~~o0O0o~~

She awakens slowly, limbs still weightless with the secretive womb like warmth that embraces a body when in sleep, the burden of memory not yet hers while her dream is still shifting apart like morning mist, fragments floating away along with the voices within. Over the past few years these precious seconds between dream and reality have been the only true peace she has known, a scant few moments in which there was no Inquisition, no lost love and no future war. Even now she could feel the faint tug of more immediate matters trying to gain her attention, causing her to burrow closer to that dissipating warmth in defiance, because even in the last vestiges of sleeping peace, some part of her knew there was something wrong. Very soon she would wonder why she felt a giving softness beneath her rather than the sharp gritty sand of the wastes, and then she would register the fact that she could not hear the howling winds that had battered her wasted form for the last few weeks, only a profound and almost expectant silence. Soon, very soon. But for now there was peace, fragile as a singular strand of spun silk, but a peace most precious nonetheless.

" _You shouldn't have made us chase you Lavellan"_

That voice appeared as the proverbial knife in the dark, slicing through the dream haze she sought to recover, slipping into her ears and firing up the synapses of memory in her mind. Her reaction was explosive,a flurry of confused movement tangled in unfamiliar sheets as she simultaneously tried to sit up and roll away from the voice that was able to inspire such instant terror. Her knees slammed into solid ground and for a brief instant, pain swallowed the terror and froze her to the spot. Quick and bright as a spark, a picture flashed before her eyes, white hot iron, glowing as if it contained the sun's core...the sun...sunburst...bright with fire…

Her scream was like the thrust of a blade, and she was scrambling backwards, fighting to tear herself away from the sheets she had pulled down with her, eyes snatching glances of a room as unfamiliar as the bedding she had slept on, her mind unable to translate it's existence while the panic still had it's teeth set firmly in her flesh and red hot images seared her mind's eye. Her back fetched up against something smooth and cold, hand flying behind her to flatten upon its slick surface, desperate to grasp onto something solid and real, her fingers causing faint squeaks as they slid upon the ungraspable surface. She twisted around onto her knees again despite the pain, and stared back into her own wild and feverish eyes, filthy matts of once blonde hair obscuring much of this foreign picture of herself.

At first she sought to reach out and brush away the hair framed within the mirror, before staring at her hand as if it were a stranger to her, it shook uncontrollably when she finally lifted her hair away from her own brow. There was no brand, no damning blemish to mark her as one of those walking shells, and only when this was confirmed, did the obvious even occur to her, for if she had truly been made tranquil, not even terror would have been able to find its way into her. She flattened her hand against the mirror now, fingers curling as if to link themselves with that of their twin, a dry sob of relief forcing its way from her mouth. Very soon she would have to address the fact that she had no idea where she was, or how she had gotten here, but for now she took the time to sink into that relief as eagerly as she had tried to sink into the safer realms of sleep.

When she finally raised her eyes once more to the mirror's silvered surface, she had calmed enough to really see what lay within its reflection, beyond her own wasted features. The angle in which she now knelt put the bed in the center behind her, the thick furs and carved wood not consistent with her idea of a cell, and since she'd already woken in one whilst in Haven, she had a pretty descriptive idea of what a cell should look like. That picture did not involve a bed, certainly not one that appeared to be designed for comfort rather than simple function, and once this became clear, it was easier to note the rest of her surroundings, though she still hadn't turned to view the room with her own eyes. There was something….a nagging sensation that was both trying to get her attention and simultaneously drifting away every time she tried to focus on it. Instead, she allowed the sensation to sneak up on her as it seemed to want to do, like a wary dog that did not trust the hand held out to it.

Through the reflection she could see that the walls surrounding her were formed of bare but smooth rock, and the first word that came to her head was 'cave', yet the rest of her surroundings didn't seem to fit that idea, at least not in any conventional way that she understood. Caves were generally for bears and spiders, another piece of knowledge she could confirm first hand, they did not tend to contain shelves piled with old and likely valuable tomes, bears and spiders had no need for delicate glass bottles and racks of instruments whose intricate composition defied understanding in those few seconds that she took to register what she was seeing. Looking down to where her knees rested, she found the ground smooth and flattened, almost marbled, her fingers finding grooves that had been carved to form a larger picture she couldn't quite put together just then, and yet this man made floor seemed to run seamlessly into the more natural rock of the walls.

Only then did she dare to look up.

She slumped against the mirror whilst containing a scream behind her own hand, cobalt eyes unable to tear themselves away from the many sightless holes that stared back down at her. It was but moments before she realised those faces were immobile. The features were rendered in exquisite detail, yet they remained only paintings after all, though for a moment they had seemed real enough for her to almost forget everything she had learned on the ruins of the Crossroads. Even without eyes, the Evanuris seemed to glare down at her in silent disapproval, a glare that should have rightly made any good Dalish fall to their knees and implore forgiveness. Strangely, it was this thought above all others that seemed to galvanize her, at the very least it stopped her from feeling as though she would climb the very walls in the midst of her panic.

Fear was easily swapped for a breathless incredulity as she stared back at those familiar yet blind faces, rendered far more finely than the mosaics that had guarded the truth of her people's 'gods'. Those faces had once held wisdom and great benevolence in her mind's eyes even amongst all the questions that formed over the years, now it was all too easy to see far less generous expressions of disdain and cruelty. She turned away from those expressions, gripping the mirror's frame to help her to unsteady feet, and it was in this moment that the sensation of alarm that she had allowed to float unhindered in the back of her mind, finally slipped through the dying panic, alerting her to what she should have seen in the first place.

Her fingers traced the gilded frame, and when she cautiously reached out with her magic, she felt the faint answering tremble from the eluvian, dormant for now but the echo of recent use still vibrated through her fingertips like a faint electric current. With the barest bend of her neck she rested her forehead against the cool surface of the glass and closed her eyes while she forced her breath to slow in defiance to the way her heart now seemed to beat itself against her ribs.

Why now?

Of all the questions that swarmed inside her skull, this was the most dominant, if not the most intelligent. Why now, why had he chosen this moment to save her above all the other perilous moments for which he had not been present, and what agenda did it serve? This last thought was a cold one, and he only had himself to blame for that, behind every action there was a motive, _his_ motive and _his_ plan, only this time she had no intention of waiting until it blindsided her to find out. Pushing away from the eluvian she staggered and mustered every inch of her will to stay on her feet as she swayed on the spot in the middle of the strange, dreamlike room, a warning twitch from newly healed muscles in her thigh letting her know that her body wasn't entirely certain it was prepared for such stress yet.

"I know you're watching, in fact you've been watching for a long time haven't you?"

She continued to force her breathing to remain slow and steady, even when her heart continued to bound in her chest as if she had just finished running a race. Sweat cooled at her temple's and ran down the length of her back as she strained to listen for the smallest sound. Now that she was concentrating she could almost _feel_ his eyes upon her, a sensation that had been with her from the moment she had left the Crossroads all those months back, she just hadn't realised it until now.

"Don't do this Solas, now is not the time for mysterious and enigmatic, now is the time for you to show yourself and bloody well explain what's going on. No more lies, not even omitting certain facts, for once, just _once_ , stop playing games"

She wasn't sure what she was expecting, in the past few months he had become so mythical a creature inside her head that she simply couldn't imagine him doing something so mundane as walking through a door, come to think of it, she couldn't even see one in this room. Did she expect him to appear suddenly in a flash of light? Given his 'god like' status that might have been all too possible if she didn't think he would have considered it far too flashy. She was about to call him out again when she felt his presence, a sensation that involved neither touch, taste or smell, it was simply a way of knowing that could only occur between two people who had been close.

"I had not expected you to awaken so soon, it wasn't my intention for you to find yourself in such an unfamiliar place while alone"

There had been a moment back at the Crossroads, just as she had been carefully winding her way through the imposing statues of Qunari caught in their last battle pose, she had heard his voice and _everything_ seemed to seize up at once, from her heart to her mind. For a moment it had felt as though she had been existing in a world that had dimmed in his absence, her actions automatic, her thoughts only perfunctory. Until she heard him speak and her whole world moved. It happened again now, the world coming into sharper focus as if she had been waiting in some kind of torpor. That he should still have such an effect did not surprise her, but this knowledge did not prepare her for the sudden hand that reached inside and gripped her heart. That hand now squeezed until she pressed a fist to her chest and bowed her head, her throat closing against the small pained sound trying to slip free. It was easy to forget how the smallest of things could make you die a hundred sweet little deaths.

She turned to face him without really preparing herself to do so, as if waiting for a conscious decision would have made the process so much more painful. It wasn't fair for those fingers to squeeze all that harder when she finally saw him standing there, looking no different from when she last saw him, the hard lines of that face, the broad grace of shoulders arched slightly while his hands rested at the small of his should have changed. Somewhere in the months between when she had last seen him, some fundamental aura about him should have changed, made him seem less like the man who haunted her every waking moment, and more like the god creature that planned an unthinkable nightmare as a means to an end. It certainly wasn't fair that the ghost of his taste came to her tongue, causing her mouth to cramp in what could thankfully be imagined as a crimace of pain.

Right then she felt like a kite that had been cut free of its bindings, her mind easily and randomly pulled in different directions, her emotions unsure where to start. Did she express outrage, gratitude, sorrow, fear or any one of the dozens that tried to find purchase as she merely stood there like a deer staring at the point of a nocked arrow. She was waiting for him to break the silence again, unable to stand that palpable merging of their combined presence, that knife edge upon which they had always stood when they were alone and the proverbial elephant sat silently in the room between them.

"Vhe-"

"Don't!"

The word flew from her mouth like a spark, her voice low and dry, the rasp making her wince as well as the flat anger that carried it. It seemed that her emotions were now choosing to work on instinct without her cleared mind to guide them. His surprise was small, barely a flinch of the eyes, but she was so hyper alerted to his presence that she didn't miss it, nor did her own body fail to react in sympathy of that tiny pain, as though something between them had connected already, a broken thread that had been simply waiting for such proximity between them, to be whole again. She swallowed hard against it, still feeling too cornered by confusion and emotional fear to trust her deeper instincts when it came to this man,

"I don't….I have no idea how I should react in this moment, but i _do_ know that if you say the V-word right now, I'm going to punch you in the nose. It might not be fair or justified right under the circumstances, but given what happened the last time we met, I won't be able to help it"

A muscle buried deep in her thigh, still recovering from the exertion of healing, gave a sharp twinge and she struck out a hand in a half crouch to grasp a small table as further muscles shook and trembled with no mercy for the implications of this scene, making her look all the more like a cornered animal. What must a man like him see through those old eyes now? A Dalish, a mortal, weak and trembling, eyes feral in their ceaseless flickering between himself and the floor, filthy and thinned by the elements, fragile...finite.

"Talitha, your injuries have taken a toll upon you, if you are to recover fully you must rest"

The laugh shot from her throat without warning, a single burst of sound that frightened her enough to clap a hand over her mouth even as she felt the faint hot prickle at the back of her eyes. It wasn't hysteria that almost made her want to cry. It was simply that he had said something so profoundly absurd in that same, calm and dry voice she remembered. that for a second he had genuinely tapped into her strange sense of humor, bringing a painful wave of nostalgia to throw into the gradually growing chemical disaster that was her emotional weather right now.

How disarmingly pragmatic, how perfectly oblivious and purposely ignorant of the gravity of this moment….how _him_.

She hadn't realised how much she had been wishing for him to have gone under some kind of metamorphosis during their time apart, until now. Some unconscious part of her had hoped for those layers of the man she loved, to have fallen away over the months, leaving some cold eyed monster in his place. A true monster to do the awful deeds that lay ahead. But it was Solas, and though he did still wear the same cold mask that had chilled her in the Crossroads, she could see the man beneath it. He'd made the mistake of allowing her to see the man before the 'god', and in doing so, had made that part of him all the harder to un-see.

"While i appreciate the bedside manner Solas, I'm going through a little bit of existential dread just at the moment"

She didn't like the forced and breathless quality of her own voice, but there was a thin streak of her old sarcasm in those strained words and these strengthened her spine a little, though couldn't unbend it.

"You see, I was supposed to die today. It was this whole big thing where I was actually going to find perhaps _some_ peace from this insane world. Then it turns out that what the Templar's actually wanted was to turn me into one of those sentient potatoes that used to wander around their Circles"

Here his lips parted as if to speak, but he was silenced by her raised hand as she clenched her teeth in a manic grin against the next hard clench in her thigh, the tightened muscle turning white hot for a moment.

"Now you might be able to imagine my surprise when I expected to wake up as a garden vegetable, and instead found myself here, the _last_ place I ever expected to find myself!"

He closed his eyes and sighed through his nose, as if trying to gather his patience and she had the distinct feeling that he was as badly prepared for this confrontation as she was.

"There will be an appropriate time for questions, but…."

"Bollocks"

He blinked in surprise and it was sincerely the most….mortal thing he had done since appearing behind her. She felt the tired ghost of her own grin tugging at her mouth and narrowed her eyes in some vague form of satisfaction, Sera and Dorian might well have cheered had they been spectating.

"Nothing about us has _ever_ been appropriate, from the lies right down to the timing. Everything about us _hurts_. Oh Solas, _why_ did you bring me here, we both know that there is no chance of this ending well. You're the man who wants to end the world, I'm the woman too cowardly to stop you, even though I genuinely don't want you to turn my home into a smear on your horizon"

Even as she marched the words out of her shivering and bent frame, she could see the edges of her world beginning to blur, she tightened the muscles of her thigh purposely in response, gulping hard had as the pain crawled up to her hip with merciless claws. She would be damned if she would faint like some fluffy Orlesian girl, actually the Orlesian women weren't all that fluffy if she thought about it, kinda pointy actually….

"Talitha!"

Her name, called sharply but sounding like he was standing under water, which was strange because she could still feel the ground under her feet. Never had she been so aware of her own feet and their grip on gravity, not since the night he had gone way ahead of her expectations of him and implored her to dance, he'd seemed very...young in that moment, the world had spun around her as he guided her steps and...no wait, her world was actually spinning _now_. It turned out that her undernourished and exhausted frame would not adhere to the point that this was _so_ not the time for involuntary weakness, she was indeed about to faint like something fluffy and piteous, and though her mouth felt suddenly too numb to move, she none the less swore profusely in her own head as all equilibrium deserted her completely.

She did not hit the ground when blurred images first became grey, as the fogged sensation of movement tipped her back with a sickening lurch, she felt a sensation of being suspended, the weight of arms that held her familiar enough to drag a sharp edge over her heart even as she slipped into the grateful dark.

~~o0O0o~~

 _Even here, she feels his presence long before sight or sound of him could alert the rest of her senses, even here their masochistic connection is still strong enough for the hairs on the back of her neck to lift. For once, her refusal to turn and look at him has nothing to do with fear of her own convictions or his machinations. She sits upon a nameless hill before a vast forest, the air heavy and palpable, the world dimmed to a dark sepia tone but for one spot highlighted in living colour that she cannot look away from. The moment is a memory suspended in her time, a picture of her that mocks what she has become, who_ _she has become._

 _In that old world in which she had lived, she shares a final meal with those that have loved her enough to ignore her many eccentricities, their smiles bathed in the orange gold of a sun soon departing, her face is young, full of the laughter of one who was soon to be set free upon the world. She can't remember what her eldest brother was saying at the time, but still she smiles to remember the laughter that follows, and the way he never let her feel anything less than normal. In all the times she has looked back upon this memory, she has experienced love and sometimes fear for what would become of them. Right now she can only feel shame as she watches on, her knees drawing beneath her chin with a sigh as she finally hears his approach whisper across the cool grass_

" _You know, I hadn't even spared them a thought until now. You once told me that i distorted everything for you when I was near. It didn't really occur to me until now that you do exactly the same for me. I left them fighting red templars in their home, they have been on my mind from the moment I rode away. Yet one look at you…."_

 _She doesn't find it quite so difficult to look at him this time. She is no less immune to her feelings for him, but here at least, she can scoop out some of the urgency and despair, if only to set them aside for a while. Her mind is not necessarily clearer, but there is a colder precision to her thoughts now, a pragmatism that settled upon her, deflecting some of the more erratic natures of her emotions, just enough not to feel another kind of tremble that wanted to find her when he was so close after so long._

 _He stands before her, all the more magnetic in this place that is his own, nothing could strike down his confidence in this place, not for long anyway, yet she holds her impassive stare, no less affected than should would always be, but better equipped to handle it here._

" _You are angry, I cannot fault you for that, but i will not apologise for stealing you from the fate of a mindless puppet"_

 _She nods once, if she could decide nothing else about how she was supposed to be feeling right now, relief at not being made tranquil was the easiest to reconcile with. Death would have been preferable, and indeed it had been preferable, until Carroll revealed the full depth of Samson's plans for her. But it is hard to be grateful while she coldly wonders what sort of motivation lay behind her rescue, he has taught her to be cautious of his every move. She turns back to the memory without further reply, and the weight of the silence between them would have crushed mountains eventually until she speaks again._

" _They were so afraid back then, but they were happy at the same time. They knew I didn't belong there, I was a rare misstep in the ancestry. They loved me, fiercely, but they knew all the same"_

 _His intelligence goes so far to let him know that now was the time to listen, and when he lowers himself to the ground beside her, something slips past the defence of her dreaming calm to cause her heart to ache briefly, for the gesture is well remembered\ another memory revisited with a surprising clarity. The ache is manageable however, as is his presence for now while she can stare upon the faces of a family yet to be fractured._

 _She points to the two young men who were currently engaging in a story that required plenty of wild hand gestures, most of them obscenely suggestive._

" _The twins never could take life seriously, they used to find everyone's suspicion of me hilarious. Every idiot rumour was just another excuse for them to tease me, but only because it taught me they would never believe I could be anything but their slightly older yet infinitely more bossy sister"_

 _She rests her chin on her shoulder to regard him for a moment, trying to decide how someone like Solas would have interacted with Aedanthir and Eliovron, before coming to the conclusion that they would have likely driven him up the wall within an hour. Sera would have wanted to keep them. She watches the taut line of his jaw and shakes her head with a small, grim smile._

 _He gives nothing but silence and a calm, otherworldly stillness in response, but the silence is absorbing her every word, and for once he is smart enough not to interrupt when the next scene of her directed dream blooms into that same living colour that has leached from all but the two that observed it. She stood on the outskirts of the forest with all of them, a newly hewn staff on her back, currently going down beneath a disorganised dogpile with her brothers, who had chosen to commemorate this life changing moment of parting by crushing her beneath their love...quite literally. They tumble away from her as their mother steps forward, that strong embrace all but cracked one of her ribs she remembers, Ferona loved her in a way a mother could love her first and only daughter, yet she remained a mystery to a woman with many sons to follow in her footsteps. Only her father remains when they all leave, walking beside Salshira his, baritone voice assaulting her with the nostalgia of her childhood, casting her mind back to the time when she had been but a tadpole and he had first sung to her of the bear and the maiden fair, making her laugh fit to choke at the end when he would indeed take upon the form of a dancing bear. Her father had never done more but support her decision to leave, but he had not been above wrenching her heart by reminding her of what she would be leaving behind._

" _I think he would have liked you"_

 _The frozen silence suddenly hangs heavily and mutely between them before she rolls her eyes and tried not to feel that slightly stronger pull of her old grin again._

" _I mean before all the, burn the world, reviled dread wolf, oops i may have taken her arm and her markings stuff….probably"_

 _She watched his head turn away quickly and knew she had caught him one of those moments of surprise, she had amused him and in doing so caused the faintest of cracks in that mask. Well at the very least there might be some hope left for his sense of humor, she wasn't sure if that made things better or worse. She stands now, the memory fading much as the one before had, her hands coming together in a sharp clap as though she has caught something, and when she opens her cupped palms, something small and green glimmers, suspened in the air._

" _I had but two weeks of freedom, I didn't want anything to do with the conclave, I'd stayed away from templars quite succesfully for most of my life, now I was going among them as an apostate spy, but the journey was worth it, and then your power found me"_

 _As she speaks, the small spinning objects begins to grow and swell with pulsing green light, reflected back in eyes that now watch her intently as she passes a hand over the replica of his orb, the green light playing over her knuckles almost affectionatly._

" _Your plan relied upon so many lies, you must have been so tired"_

 _Her hand closes about the ghostly orb and it winks out like an extinguished flame._

" _You think I'm telling you this to make you feel shame, or perhaps to shed some life into some of the nameless faces that will die for your dream. Perhaps that's what I should be doing, but no. For now that's so far away as to not matter here"_

 _She waves a tired hand in the direction of her recently departed memories,_

" _I'm showing you this because I don't think you know what to do next. I'm thinking clear enough to suspect that you didn't intend for this to happen any more than I did, and sooner or later you're going to have to make a decision that decides my fate"_

 _For just a few seconds too long she thinks he will continue to say nothing, and that almost makes her want to slap him agin just to find some reaction, which in turn makes her seriously question some of her survival instincts. Eventually some sort of life seems to flow back into him and he sighs but doesn't lower that pinning stare._

" _You are correct, I haven't the faintest idea what to do"_

 _It seems his well of humor dried quickly, and for all their bland delivery, she can still sense the faintest tug of defeat in his words. Was he has fundamentally tired as she was?_

" _I know"_

 _It seems that neither one of them wants to look away, be it a question of will or simply that strange connection that suddenly wells up even stronger than before. He looks ethereal here, and not for the first time she recognizes that she could sense so much more power about him in this place, not surprising, just another of those things that should have been obvious had she been paying attention to anything but what was in her heart. Yet she had come to terms with the fact that there were some things you really couldn't see coming, failing to notice that the man you loved was actually a recently awakened thousand year old embodiment of Fen'Harel wasn't something you really trained your eye to look for along with the usual bad habits, she'd eventually cut herself a little slack with that one. With that unfamiliar uncertainty hanging over him, it was almost easy to see how she might have missed it, but she knows that it will be but seconds before that mask falls back into place again, and then it would be all too easy to see the man that he had been, the man he felt he needed to be in order to set things right._

" _I thought I was ready to let you go"_

" _I thought_ I _was ready to let me go"_

 _He doesn't acknowledge her flippant tone, heis eyes have now turned to where her memory had been, his expression not giving anything away about what he might be seeing in it's place. Perhaps he too longs for that other version of her, the one that still had an empty path before her. Perhaps like she, he wonders how her fate might have turned if she had arrived too late, if she had gotten distracted on her way to the conclave and was never there to interrupt the orbs ritual._

" _I cannot change my path Talitha, not even for you"_

 _They shared differing opinions on this particular statement but she kept hers to herself for now, a circular argument in the fade would have been as pointless as it was ironic, and she understood that he wasn't really telling her right now, merely reinforcing his own will in some way, much as he had likely done each time he had lied to her. She turns away in order to better hold her tongue and does her best not to flinch when she hears him stand, feeling his hesitance just moments before his hands fall upon her shoulders, dry and warm, their grip too familiar for her not to feel that heated prickling behind her eyes again. Here was the moment that she should have shoved him away and turned her anger loose upon him, if only so that she wouldn't have to remember all the times when the memory of his touch appeared only as a cruel phantom in her dreams or in the loneliest hours when she had lain in her bed atop skyhold with her teeth buried in her knuckles to suppress the screams when the grief reached its peak._

 _All the reasons to hate him were genuine and justified, and she has no doubt he could offer more before things came to their final conclusion, but it all fades in the shade of the way he grips her now, those hands slowly tightening around her shoulders, and that's why he has always been as dangerous to her as she is to him. What it all meant of course, was that love really was a bit of a bastard._

 _She swallows down the desire for tears, even as his forehead touched the back of hers and that grip on her shoulders folded across her chest to keep her against him, her own hand lifting to grip one of his wrists, though not to pull it away, like it or not, in his presence the instinct to hold on right now, outweighed everything else._

 _They stand there in silence, each of them knowing that this single moment of comfort should not be, for he it was simply the fact that in some fundamental way this was wrong, to be in the arms of someone she knew would sooner or later cause untold destruction. For him...well she supposes he has many reasons why this was wrong, most of them noble, perhaps a few of them selfish, none of it really mattered in the end. They steal the moment anyway, take it's comfort in order to obtain just a few seconds ignorance of what is likely to come and what it will mean for the both of them. She takes the comfort because she knows that though there are several paths to chose from here, but none of them will be painless._

 _Eventually she does slide away from arms that loosen without protest, as if he too knew that their moment was up, and his face is once more that perfect mask of composure when she looks at him. She understands that look, but she hates it at the same time because it is too effective a tool for him to ever give it up._

" _I never worshipped you, no matter what my clan believed that was never it. Even then, when you were nothing but a stone wolf, I could sense a fathomless loneliness. You were never alone, you might not have heard me but you were never alone"_

 _A figure moved up the hill behind her now, indistinct at first but growing closer. That confident stride had faltered somewhat in the years, as had the oblivious grin of one with no idea of what was coming over the horizon. She doesn't need to look to look at this apparition of her younger twin to know that the contrast is stark as it is uncomfortable, she can see the way his fists clench at his side as he see's the two of them standing side by side, the ghost of herself smiling faintly, still quite oblivious. She knows how she looks, knows the toll that has been taken upon her, but it's never so real as when it is placed next to this unblemished parody of what she had been._

" _When you decide what happens next, I want you to remember this moment very clearly Solas. You will do what you must, i have made some insane sort of peace with that. I still love you, I don't think I'm quite at peace with that, but I'm really far too tired to deny it. But losing pieces of my soul and still having to walk and talk like a real person? I'm not okay with that"_

 _Her remaining hand finds that of her ghost self, and she can feel the cool touch of death flesh, yet it doesn't make her want to recoil or scream, it just makes her sad._

" _When you decide, I want you to remember that, because if i lose any more or myself, I'll be just as empty as any tranquil, you will have saved me from nothing"_

 _She doesn't stay to read his reaction or answer a rebuke, her dream will begin to fade from him as he watches her descend the hill with her own ghost. Her steps will take her to places not meant even for him now, a place where she can heal just enough to be able to at least stand in his presence the next time she wakens. She doesn't have the power to stop him, neither magic or even the lure of a normal life can do that, and she never possessed the power to stop loving him. All she could do was try and keep the parts of herself that still remained, and lay the lost one's to rest._

 **~~o0O0o~~**

He woke long before she did, the echo of her last words still with him when he rose from the chair placed beside the bed where she now slept in complete exhaustion. If he thought he might wake with some revelation about what he must do next, he was sorely disappointed to find himself no wiser than when he brought her here. Part of him could still barely credit that she was here, in a place he'd never intended for _anyone_ to find, least of all her. Moments before he had stepped back through the eluvian with her in his arms, the world had been red and loud with the sound of his own blood rushing in his ears, but it's objectives had been simple. Now they were anything but.

" _You must decide which one she is"_

The simplicity of Cole's demand belied the complexity that hid beneath it, but when he had stepped out onto the Hissing Wastes intent on nothing else but murder, for a while, just a few red hazed minutes, he _had_ chosen. All that was left to do was to find a way to live with that choice.

 **~~o0O0o~~**

 _They are so intent upon their victory that not one of them see's him stalking across the sand towards them, he is in the vast open dunes and none of them sense the oncoming storm enough to glance up and spy his approach. His rage is a silent thing now, unable to be translated into sound, he is tethered only by the feel of the shifting, gritted surface beneath his feet and the sight of her prone shape propped up in steel clad hands, her face bathed in the light of the oncoming starburst brand. That they are following another's orders is irrelevant, it is the simple fact that they_ _ **dare**_ _to destroy something so uniquely beautiful, so unaccountably singular in his eyes, that is enough for him to have already decided their fate. He has found himself in a rare state of single mindedness, no second or third thoughts to pull him back or slow his steps, nothing to reel in the first touch of his magic as it lashes out, as silent and unseen as he is._

 _Perhaps there might have been some small mercy left in him, if they had ended things as she had hoped they would, not much, but perhaps enough to not visit his own imagination upon their deaths, not as he planned to do now._

 _One of the two archers posted on an overhanging ridge finally turns enough to look at him, but his bow is barely raised before a high, thin scream caught his attention, as the templar that bore the burning brand, suddenly found himself engulfed in flame that crawled out from beneath his breastplate to swallow him in agonizing heat. He doesn't break his stride now, not even when his eyes come alive with that malevolent glow once more, rooting both the archers to the spot in unforgiving stone, even as the distant cry of "Mage!" is accompanied by the song of swords leaving their sheaths,_

 _Their blades wouldn't help them now._

 _From the corner of his eye he see's the gurn panic as the flaming Templar collapses before it, the creature rearing and bolting, it's bulk slamming into one of the remaining men in it's desperate haste to get away, the man is caught upon the wagon it still drags behind it and is pulled screaming across the plains. He feels the wind of their spells, the ones they used to stifle and suffocate the magic they had been trained to fear, if he were the kind of man prone to smugness he might well have laughed as he felt their attempts, instead he merely shows his contempt for their efforts, his steps never faltering, the spells flickering and dying like candles in a windstorm._

 _The first one to reach him attempts to part his head from his shoulders, he pauses only long enough enough to catch the blade on it's downswing, regarding the templar's horrified surprise with dispassion as the steel bit into his flesh. His blood is hot enough to steam in the chill winds as it runs the length of his forearm, his grip tightening even as the templar attempts to yank the sword back. It is the curve of her gentle smile that he remembers as he tilts his staff and drives the blade into the man's throat. The death is unsatisfactory, but even now, more approached, their outrage still distant, shouts lost in the rush of blood thrumming in his ears._

 _The baleful fire is still alive in his eyes, eyes now trained upon Carroll, the coward already ordering the next three men to charge. Whatever finesse had been taught to them al in the chantry, has been lost under the guidance of a madman and the influence of the red Lyrium. They are cumbersome, clumbsy, too used to relying upon their brute force and strength of numbers, and no lessons could have prepared them for a mage like him. They have cleared but half the distance towards him when the sands fly as if some monstrous creature has been birthed from the ground, the winds gathering around them in their own personal cyclone. He is thinking of her laughter when he'd once retreated from his tent peeling small lizards from his person when the screams begin again, the sand and wind combining to trap the men in a hell that first reddened then tore at the unprotected flesh of their faces._

 _Those screams now have Carroll rooted to the spot, his eyes unable to look away as the deathly cyclone began to turn red. The wind continues to scream, even when those mortal screams have withered to nothing and the last remaining templar finally turns to face him._

 _It isn't fear that makes Carroll's hands shake, not quite. It is the impotent fury of one who has had a hard one victory snatched away from nowhere, an effect rather close to the one that had Samson send his men to the cursed woman still at his feet. He readies his sword anyway, when the red song guided you, there really wasn't any other way for it to be. For Solas, the red song in his ears is of a different kind, and perhaps more deadly, his fury has had far more time for practice. His stride is unbroken, even as the very shadows seemed to climb and envelope his body, making him the centre of a shifting nebulus that writhed and churned, seeking form._

 _The wolf steps form the shadows like a piece of the night come to life, it's hunched and hulking back bristling with hackles and the mistlike tendrils of ink-like darkness that float away dreamlike, even in the greedy wasteland winds. The growl that leaks from between it's bared teeth is from a time far too ancient contemplate, and somewhere in the part of the templars brain that housed instinct, something long buried stirs in response to that sound. Six eyes gleam with scarlet hatred as thing approaches on legs stiff with their instinct to tense and leap, a silent snarl wrinkling it's muzzle even further just seconds before Carroll decides to seize upon his last chance._

 _The wolf finally follows its instinct and leaps, but it lands just short of the armour shrouded madman as he dropped to his knees and seizes a handful of tangled blonde hair, yanking it back to better expose Levallan's throat to his blade., The creature lunges, snarling and snapping in fury, the deep set coals of it's eyes seeming to almost bulge, yet it doesn't dare to get close enough to do what it really wants to do._

" _You killed my men, I should slit her throat for that alone. But if you want her back alive you'll back away"_

 _The shadow shrouded wolf paces back and forth rapidly, a continuous growl rolling from it's throat, the urge to leap again clear with every agitated move that it makes, and yet when Carroll tightens the blade to her throat just enough to leave the thinnest of red lines, it takes two reluctant steps back. The sword relaxes the barest inch until the wolf takes another two steps back._

" _Why. Why does one woman mean so much. You people, you rallied around her like she was the last hope on earth, Samson commands his best men to chase her across Thedas. You just slaughtered these men to keep her alive. Why is she so important to warrant all this death?"_

 _Solas wouldn't have been able to describe why to a man like Carroll, not when half of what the man had once been was now lost to that infectious song that now riddled his conscious thoughts, and neither does he care to. All thought is saved for the sight of that knife to her throat, and only here does he hesitate. Not because he believes that he won't be able to get to her in time, but for just a moment he wonders if this were not the end she had strived for. But as soon as that thought appears, another blooms behind it, the image of her curled upon a dusty couch, reading scrolls from foreign dignitaries with an ever increasing incredulity._

 _He remembers the highly inappropriate but infectious laughter when she finally came upon a Parody piece composed by Sera. It had been a small moment amongst much larger events, and yet is was in that very moment that he felt the greatest fear since his waking, when he realised that he loved her, and that small moment now erdicates any chance that the templar might have had for mercy. While Carroll has been occupied with the 'other', he has crept up on stealthier paws, and when his shadow finally falls over her face, Carroll barely has time to turn his head before jaws settle about his throat and rip him free from her._

 _The wolf of shadow watches silently as the dark grey beast shakes it;s screaming prey back and forth, a dark tongue licking at its muzzle when something tears with a wet sound moments before the steel creature began to drown in its own blood. Beneath the blood however, is another smell, sharp and sweet at the same time, familiar and laden with longing. The black wolf tilts its head in Levallan's direction, her body still, but she remains breathing, and warm. It lengthens it's body and that dark muzzle is but inches away when the great grey beast is suddenly towering over her prone body. They stand nose to nose, teeth bared and growls rising to snarls, no words could ever really comminicate this mental struggle, but it is the shadow that backs away now, pulling back to the shadows while the great grey wolf remains gaurdian of it's prize._

 _Like a trick of the eye, the shadow thins to transparency until only the afterimage of those red eyes remain, and even that slips away eventually. Only when all is once again quiet but for the sound of the wind, does Solas realise that the rage has slipped away with it, and for that much he is glad, though it's absence does not precipitate any sudden pangs of guilt for what now surrounds him. He presses his nose to her throat and finds the scent of her living warmth, he is barely even aware of the change, only that he needed hands to carry her._

 _She is light enough to make him wince, there was enough blood to still want to make him hurry, and yet she was alive. It was not what she had wanted, but now that she was safe, the idea of leaving her here to wither in the wastes just couldn't be borne. It would all end in tears and likely more blood, but blood would always follow them eventually, he only has, to look around him to see the truth in this._

" _Is this truly the course you wish to take"_

 _That ever constant pragmatic voice now sounds weary in his head as he looks down at bruised flesh and blonde hair matted with blood, feeling a sharp twinge, an aftershock of the cold fury that had seized control for just long enough to save her in time. He could ignore it if he chose, but it would soon come slinking back with the same question before long. It wasn't just a question. It was a decision in disguise, and invisible line placed before his feet, one that he had to choose to step over._

" _Yes. Because she is mine, and that fate was always destined to be cruel. The fate they had planned, was crueler still. I would break her heart a thousand times before I allowed that to happen"_

 _There is no reply and he takes this silence as consent, though he knows that voice well enough to suspect it will find him again none the less. For now however, he considers the line crossed, his feet pass over it easily enough as he shifts her pitiful weight in his arms and sets his sights upon the eluvian once more._

 _ **~~~o0O0o~~**_

The mage and his charge seemed to slip into thin air almost as easily as he had appeared, given what he has seen in the last few minutes, this is less extrairdinairy in comparrison. The men were a loss he could ill afford, but their suspicions needed to be confirmed and the elf had performed in a spectacularly revealing fashion. He stayed upon the edge of the dune for a while, watching the wind and the sand work together to bury the templars remains, given a day or so, the only sign of this short and brutal slaughter would be the two frozen bow men. He was contemplating having them torn down before they left when he heard the sharp hiss and crunch of footsteps behind him, the edge of a robe swinging into his peripheral vision as its owner joined his silent watch.

"Your prisoner was correct, It's a shame that you could not liberate more of them from that little skirmish in Wycombe"

Samson rose from sand, his eyes now trained upon the spot where the two figures had disapeared. He didn't like this man, and it had nothing to do with his magic, but he was a necessary evil with a similar goal, and he'd worked with men whom he despised more.

"We got the one you needed, he gave us enough to confirm she's your key to Fen'Harel, only he just walked away from it, what's your plan now"

The mage pulled his hood lower as a short gust of wind threw sand up at them, Samson closed his eyes and felt it graze over his windburnt cheeks.

"Given their history, I suspect she will find a way back before long, by then we will have finished our preperations. You will need to replace your spy in Skyhold, Segrit was a sore loss"

"Segret was a miserable little pissant but he served his purpose, the next one will need to be sharper, they'll be on their gaurd for a good while now"

He finally turned away from the rapidly dissappearing carnage and glared at the shadows hidden beneath the elaborate hood, Tevinters always had to make a song and dance about everything, but even he couldn't deny their prowess with magic, they might even stand a chance against the god creature by the time they finished composing their infernal rituals.

"This elven god commands the key to the fade Samson, the things we could learn from him could once more breath life back into our empire"

Samson snorted at the fanatical tone of the mage's voice, it was the same old song composed to another tune, though it made no difference to him. As long as they kept him alive and honoured his price, he would dance with this proverbial demon and perhaps give him his elven god.

" The void with Tevinter, what you do with this creature once you have him is no concern of mine. I get Skyhold and I get Levallan, you meet my terms and you can play with your new toy all you like"

He could almost feel the mages disapproval like a hand pressing at his back as he walked away, no doubt considering fifty or so different ways to double cross him. Samson almost welcomed it, he was not a man used to waiting or even caution in general, he did not compete well in the slow game. But now whenever he feels the weakness of his own hasty hand, he needs only to remember the sweet sight of the elven bitches terror at the sight of the sunburst brand.

Waiting had its compensations.


End file.
